Armed men have attacked an oil installation belonging to the Royal Dutch Shell company in Nigeria’s volatile southern Niger Delta region, industry sources said on Friday.
They said there were no casualties in the attack late on Thursday afternoon, but a number of oil workers were being held at the facility, in the southern Bayelsa state.
”Negotiations are going on. Contact has been established,” Bayelsa police Commissioner Hafiz Ringim said by telephone, confirming that as far as he knew ”no one has been killed and no one has been wounded” in the attack.
The police boss and Shell officials were unable to say how many assailants carried out the raid or how many boats they used.
No one has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.
A Shell official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that some of the workers held on the oil installation were released overnight by the armed invaders.
”Many of them [workers] have been allowed to leave the installation overnight. We still have a small number yet to be let free,” said the official, who declined to give any figure on the number of the assailants and the workers.
”There is a strong hope that they will soon all be left off,” the source added.
There are unconfirmed reports that the attackers are trying to negotiate a cash payment in exchange for vacating the facility.
The installation’s pumping station, which normally produces 12 000 barrels of oil per day, was shut down. Last month, the same oil facility was attacked by a dozen armed men, two of whom were killed by the military.
Nigeria, which this week hosted for the first time a meeting of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, is encountering mounting trouble in the restive Niger Delta, where attacks on oil installations and oil workers are growing more and more frequent. The attacks have caused Nigeria’s crude production to drop by about 25%.
In the past six years about 600 people, including a number of foreigners, have died in the trouble and more than 180 oil workers have been taken hostage by militant groups who say their aim is to demand a larger share of the region’s oil wealth for local communities.
The last hostage-taking incident goes back to December 7 when three Italians and one Lebanese national were abducted from a facility belonging to Italy’s Agip. They are still being held by gunmen.
A militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, claimed responsibility for kidnapping the four and threatened to launch further attacks on the oil industry in the following days. — Sapa-AFP