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01/18/2006:

"Shell may pull out of Niger Delta after 17 die in boat raid"

The oil giant Royal Dutch Shell was considering pulling out of the volatile Niger Delta region yesterday after heavily armed militants stormed one of its facilities and killed at least 17 people.

The attack early on Sunday, the latest during an upsurge of violence in the oil-rich swamp area, came only days after the kidnap of four foreign oil workers. Militant groups demanding local control of oil wealth warned Shell to withdraw immediately from the world's eighth largest oil exporter.

The Anglo-Dutch company has already pulled out 330 employees after gunmen in speedboats overran the Benisede flow station on Sunday. "The attackers invaded the flow-station in speed boats, burnt down two staff accommodations, damaged the processing facilities and left," Shell said in a statement yesterday.

At least 17 troops died in the attack as well as an unknown number of militants and Shell employees, said Brigadier General Elias Zamani, commander of a task force deployed by the government to try to contain spiralling violence in Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta.

A group calling itself the the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) claimed responsibility for the recent spate of attacks in the region, including a raid on 11 January at Shell's EA offshore platform in which four foreigners were kidnapped, and a subsequent explosion that ruptured a major oil pipeline. The group advised oil workers to leave the delta, which produces almost all Nigeria's 2.5 million barrels a day of oil.

"It must be clear that the Nigerian government cannot protect your workers or assets. Leave our land while you can or die in it," the group said in an e-mail statement. "Our aim is to totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil."
indepedendent.co.uk