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Nigeria: Militants Attack Shell's Bonga Field
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This Day (Lagos)
20 June 2008
Posted to the web 20 June 2008
Lagos
Nigeria's biggest offshore facility, Royal Dutch Shell's Bonga field, was shut down yesterday following an attack on the oil field by militants.
Offshore facilities are hitherto thought to be safe from militant attacks.
Located 120 kilometres (75 miles) offshore, Bonga oil field has a daily production capacity of 200,000 barrels of oil and 150 million standard cubic feet of gas.
The militants, numbering about 20, who were said to have operated in three speedboats, also kidnapped a United States citizen, Captain Jack Stone, a staff of Tidex, an offshore company.
Stone was, however, released at about 5 pm yesterday unconditionally.
The latest attack, which took place in the early hours, resulted in the shut in of about 200,000 barrels per day (bpd), which is about 10 per cent of Nigeria's current daily production of about 2 million bpd.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has claimed responsibility for the attack and threatened more attacks.
The group warned all the oil majors operating in the country to evacuate their expatriate staff from the oil fields, until the issues in the region are addressed.
A spokesman of Shell Development Company of Nigeria, Mr. Precious Okolobo, confirmed that production from the Bonga field had stopped following the incident.
Okolobo who said Shell was carrying out a detailed inspection of the Bonga Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) and other key installations in order to have a clearer picture of what really happened, said he could not say when production would resume.
He said: "Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company's (SNEPCo's) Bonga field was attacked this morning (yesterday morning) by unknown gunmen. We can account for all personnel in Bonga field, and have no report about people being taken hostage from our operations. Three people who were rough handled have been treated for light injuries.
"Production from Bonga field has stopped. We are carrying out detailed inspection of the Bonga FPSO and other key installations to ascertain what really happened. It is too early to say when production will resume. SNEPCo is doing everything possible to ensure the safety of personnel on board, and our thoughts are with staff and contractors on what must have been a traumatic experience."
However, MEND said: "The location of yesterday's attack was deliberately chosen to remove any notion that offshore oil exploration is far from our reach."
According to a statement sent online to THISDAY from the official site of MEND, spokesman of the group, Gbomo Jomo, boasted that the next attack would "cripple the facility on a final note," adding that MEND would carry out attack on any oil facility no matter where it is located.
He said the group had aimed at blowing the control room of the facility but later decided not to detonate its explosives because it did not want loss of human lives.
The dreaded militia group warned that all expatriate staff working on the facility and within Niger Delta should be evacuated to avoid casualties, saying it had decided to prove to "the Federal Government that it was not happy with the present situation in the region."
Jomo said though the group seized the American in the early hours of yesterday, it would release him soon so that those who had been frisking the Federal Government in the guise of releasing hostages would not make easy money with it.
The Ijaw Monitoring Group (IMG) described the attack on Bonga Oil Platform as the handiwork of Ijaw god of war (Egbesu).
In a statement made available to THISDAY, IMG National Co-ordinator, Comrade Joseph Evah, said the attack had been long overdue, given what he described as "the senseless neglect and development of the people of the Niger Delta.
Nigeria's production capacity prior to 2006 stood at about 2.7 million bpd but has been reduced by a quarter owing to series of attacks on oil facilities in the oil-rich region by armed militants.
Shell's Nigerian operations have suffered a lot of setbacks owing to series of attacks on its facilities by Niger Delta militants.
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Only last week, the Managing Director of SPDC, Mr. Mutiu Sunmonu, said the company currently had as much as 400,000 barrels of crude oil shut in as a result of militant attacks on its facilities.
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