Lagos — Nigerian soldiers shot two workers dead at the construction site of Chevron's Escravos Gas-To-Liquid (EGTL) plant in Delta State, disrupting construction work and causing a riot that left several buildings destroyed, a Delta State government official said yesterday.

Associated Press (AP) however quoted a Delta State Government spokesman, Mr. Linus Chima, as saying that normalcy had been restored at the plant.

Chima said local government officials had begun to investigate the cause of the violence that started on Monday afternoon and continued through Tuesday.

"It was a minor disagreement that got out of hand," he said.

On Monday, he said, a convoy of 15 buses began to travel around the plant, stopping at several security checkpoints inside the compound.

One bus however failed to stop at a checkpoint and the driver got into an argument with security guards at the plant's main gate, he said.

According to him, a group of Nigerian soldiers detailed to guard the plant arrived at the same time and fired shots at the crowd "to try to get them to disperse".

He confirmed that soldiers shot and killed two Nigerian workers.

Workers responded by burning buildings and fighting with soldiers until the situation was brought under control by local officials, AP reported.

The spokesman however stated that construction work at the plant continued uninterrupted yesterday.

Chima said the fighting was not related to the activities of militant groups that operate in the oil-rich Niger Delta.

Officials with Chevron, based in San Ramon, California, US, did not respond to calls seeking comment, according to AP report.

Also calls put through by THISDAY to Chevron's General Manager in charge of Policy, Government and Public Affairs, Mr. Femi Odumabo, were unsuccessful as his line could not be reached last night.

The Escravos plant, a joint venture between Chevron and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), is designed to take the natural gas produced by oil exploration and turn it into liquid diesel fuel to run vehicles and other machineries.

The $2 billion plant, which is being constructed by Sasol of South Africa, will when completed by 2012 have the double effect of reducing gas flare and producing low-sulfur diesel fuels for international markets.

The plant, located near Warri, about 100 kilometres (60miles) south-east of Lagos, will when completed have the capacity to process about 300,000 cubic feet a day of gas into 34,000 barrels a day of GTL diesel fuels.

Chevron is currently sponsoring over 200 Nigerians who will run the plant on a 26-month education and training course at Sasol plants in Sasolburg and Secunda, South Africa.

Sasol, the world's top producer of liquids from gas recently carried upward review of the cost of the project with the completion date shifted to 2012 from a previous start-up date of 2010.