/ 17 March 2003

Shell pulls staff out of Niger Delta

Oil giant Shell said on Sunday it was evacuating some non-essential staff from Nigeria’s volatile Niger Delta, where five people were killed in clashes between troops and ethnic militants.

The pullout came after fighting between Nigerian navy troops and Ijaw ethnic militants at a village of Okerenkoko on the Escravos River that, witnesses said, left five civilians dead and several soldiers injured.

The village is not far from the oil port of Warri, where Shell and other multinational oil firms are based. Activists of the Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities accused

the navy of provoking the hostilities by launching a premeditated attack on the village last Thursday. The soldiers accused the community of planning to disrupt oil facilities and attack rival communities, the activists said in a statement.

Nigerian navy representative, Navy Capt Shinebi Hungiapuko, confirmed that a ”fracas” had occurred in the area, but said he didn’t know details. The fighting disrupted boats moving back and forth on the river, which serves as the main transportation artery in the swampy area.

On Sunday, military boats were plying the waterway in a bid to restore stability. Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary was evacuating employees ”who are not vital to operations” from company facilities in the area, a company representative said on Sunday, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

The representative did not give details of the pullout, which began on Saturday. He said he could not confirm media reports the action was affecting oil production.

Shell, which produces about half of Nigeria’s output of two million barrels a day, has key facilities in the area including Jones Creek and Odidi pipeline stations which together pump more than 200 000 barrels per day of crude.

Nigeria is the world’s sixth biggest producer and the fifth largest supplier of US oil imports. The previous decade has witnessed an upsurge of ethnic and criminal violence in the Niger Delta, a desperately poor region of swamps and rivers where nearly all of the country’s oil is drilled.

Oil companies frequently come under attack by activists and thugs who sabotage pipelines and kidnap company employees in a bid to extort company payoffs. Delta activists accuse multinational oil firms of colluding with Nigeria’s government to deny communities oil royalties and compensation for alleged environmental damage.

Rival ethnic groups frequently wage deadly skirmishes over government and oil company revenues paid to impoverished communities. – Sapa-AP