Forbes/AFX News Limited: Gunmen attack Shell oil plant in Nigeria UPDATE: Sunday 15 January 2006
LONDON (AFX) - Unidentified gunmen clashed with Nigerian soldiers guarding an oil plant operated by the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC in the Niger Delta on Sunday, a local military commander said.
The attack on the Benisede flow station came as fears mounted for four foreign oilmen who were kidnapped five days ago by suspected ethnic militants following a spate of dynamite attacks on Shell's pipelines in the region.
'There was an attack on that location at about 7:00 (0600 GMT) today. We don't know who made the attack. We don't know about casualties,' Brigadier-General Elias Zamani told AFP by telephone.
Bayelsa State government spokesman Ekiyor Welson said: 'We understand there was a shootout between the boys and the armed forces. We've not heard of any casualties. The boys have taken over the flow station.'
'The military are working there in the area now,' he added.
A Shell spokeswoman said the company was aware of an incident at Benisede but that she had no details as yet.
Benisede is a riverside pumping station which gathers crude oil from a network of wells in swampland around the Bomadi Creek, part of the Niger Delta south of the city of Warri and 300 kilometres southeast of Lagos.
The plant is routinely guarded by a platoon of Nigerian soldiers from Zamani's Joint Taskforce, a combined unit set up to protect the Niger Delta's multi-billion-dollar oil industry from attack by pirates and militias.
On Wednesday suspected separatist militants blew up Shell's Trans-Ramos pipeline near Benisede, cutting off 106,000 barrels of daily production, and seized four foreign oil workers from a boat operating off the coast.
The oil workers -- an American, a Briton, a Bulgarian and a Honduran -- have been held since Wednesday somewhere in the delta creeks, officials said.
A previously unknown ethnic Ijaw separatist group has claimed responsibility for the attacks and demanded the release of a detained guerrilla leader and an impeached state governor who was seen as a champion of local autonomy.
Navy spokesman Captain Obiara Medani told AFP that security forces were still trying to locate the gang in the creeks south of Warri, but that any negotiations with the group were a 'political matter' he could not discuss.
'We are making progress as to their location,' he said.
Although Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer, pumping around 2.6 mln barrels per day worth billions of dollars, most Nigerians still live in crippling poverty.
The creeks of the Niger Delta, a Scotland-sized swathe of mangrove forest and heavily wooded swampland, are home to several heavily armed pirate gangs and militant groups. Kidnappings and sabotage are common.
On Friday, a group dubbing itself the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) demanded the government release Mujahid Dokubo Asari, an Ijaw guerrilla leader who has demanded independence for the Niger Delta.
Asari declared a ceasefire in August 2004 and vowed to pursue his goals through political agitation, but he was arrested last year after vowing to tear Nigeria apart. He is to appear in court on Tuesday on treason charges.
Asari's lawyer insists his group has no link with the recent attacks.
MEND also demanded the release of the ousted Bayelsa State governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, who has been detained in Nigeria and is wanted by British police after he skipped bail in London to escape money-laundering charges.
(Updates with comments from Shell and state government official, adds background)
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