Nigeria: Rebels Attack Multiple Oil Production Facilities
June 29th, 2009The ongoing oil infrastructure attacks in Nigeria have been stepped up in recent days. Shell is now having to shut in some production.
Via: Reuters:
Royal Dutch Shell said on Monday it had shut in some oil production at its western operations in Nigeria’s Niger Delta while it investigated reports of attacks on two well clusters in its Estuary Field.
“We have received reports of attacks on two well clusters in the Estuary Field in the western operations. We have shut in some production as a precautionary measure while investigations progress,” a Shell spokesman in Nigeria said.
Nigeria’s main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), said earlier its fighters had attacked an oil platform in Shell’s Forcados fields in the southern state of Delta.
Shell said the attacks being investigated were not in Forcados itself but in its western operations, all of which feed into the Forcados oil export terminal.
Forcados is one of Nigeria’s benchmark crude oil grades but production has been subject to delays for months due to militant attacks on oil facilities and disruptions to production.
Shell extended a force majeure on June 17 on its Forcados oil shipments for the rest of June and all of July. The measure, which frees it from contractual obligations, was first imposed in March after an attack on its trans-Escravos pipeline.
Perhaps they didn’t like the name of that joint Russian-Nigerian oil venture. : /