Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua has ordered the country’s armed forces to tighten security in the Niger Delta and hunt down those who carried out an attack on a Shell offshore oil facility, his office said on Friday.
”The president has … directed that security be beefed up at all oil facilities and installations in the Niger Delta to forestall further acts of terrorism by criminal elements in the region,” his office said in a statement.
Nigeria’s armed forces and security agencies had been told to take ”all necessary action” to apprehend the militants who attacked Royal Dutch Shell’s Bonga oilfield, which lies 120km offshore, in the early hours of Thursday.
The attack forced the Anglo-Dutch giant to stop production at Bonga, cutting Nigeria’s oil output by a tenth, and shocking an industry that thought such deepwater sites in Nigeria were relatively immune from sabotage. — Reuters