The blockade by women protesters of one of Nigeria’s largest oil terminals entered its third day Wednesday, an engineer at the plant told AFP by telephone.
Some 150 women demanding jobs for their sons stormed the Escravos oil terminal run by US-owned Chevron Nigeria on Monday and barricaded a storage depot, landing field and dockside.
A Chevron representative said on Tuesday that ”more than 700” workers, both Nigerians and international staff, were blockaded inside the plant and that its operations were severely disrupted.
Plant workers estimated the number of trapped staff at 2 000.
”They are complaining that their children have not been given employment,” an engineer stuck in the plant, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
”They are not armed or violent. Most of them are women over 45 and there is no way we would lay a finger on them.”
Chevron officials were not available for comment early
on Wednesday, but the engineer said that most workers were confined to their quarters.
”Oil is still arriving at the tank farm by pipeline from the rigs, but many of them have had to cut their production quotas as none is being taken away.
”Staff have been unable to leave or arrive for their changeovers since Monday, when a boat carrying a fresh two-week shift was turned back from the dock,” he said.
The Escravos terminal is a major crude oil storage depot 300 kilometres east of Lagos. Production from Chevron’s fields to the west of the Niger Delta is stored there for export.
”The protesters, who have barricaded key installations in the tank farm, have disrupted very important operational facilities at the facility,” Chevron Nigeria’s public affairs manager Sola Omole
said in a statement on Tuesday.
Chevron officials said the Nigerian security forces had been alerted but that the company was attempting to end the stand-off through negotiation with the protesters and community elders.
”The management of Chevron Nigeria Ltd has continued to appeal to the women to embrace peaceful dialogue in the resolution of their demands,” Omole said.
Local people demanding money or jobs in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region regularly hijack oil facilities, sometimes kidnapping but rarely harming oil workers. – Sapa-AFP