Nigeria to hunt militants
2008-06-21 11:15
Abuja - Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua
has ordered the country's armed forces to tighten security in
the Niger Delta and hunt down militants behind an attack on
Shell's main 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.
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 some 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.
Shell on Friday declared force majeure on oil shipments for
June and July from Bonga, which has a nameplate capacity of
220 000 barrels per day, meaning it cannot guarantee to meet its contractual obligations.
The group that claimed responsibility for the attack - the
Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) -
shrugged off the president's order over security as "empty talk"
but said it was on a war footing.
"We are asking all expatriate oil workers to vacate oil
facilities and living quarters in the Niger Delta while we
settle our score with an insincere federal government," it said
in an e-mailed statement, urging youths to sabotage oil sites.
MEND has mostly limited its strikes to bombing oil pipelines
and kidnapping oil workers at onshore facilities in Nigeria.
It warned after the Bonga attack that oil and gas tankers in
Nigerian waters may become targets, raising the prospect of a
new campaign of sabotage in the waters of the Gulf of Guinea.
Nigeria's House of Representatives has called an emergency
meeting for Monday with the defence and oil ministers, national
security adviser and foreign oil firms to discuss the attack.