Nigerian Militants Target Oil

Militants launched attacks across Nigeria’s troubled delta region Saturday, blowing up oil installations and seizing nine foreigners, including three Americans.

A fire was quickly put out on a Royal Dutch Shell platform that loads the company’s tankers in the western delta, but normal operations at its Forcados terminal could not continue, halting the flow of 400,000 barrels a day.

“We can’t load because there is some damage to the loading platform,” Shell official Donald Boham said.

Shell said it had evacuated an oil platform off its Atlantic coast as a precaution, shutting off an additional 115,000 barrels a day.

There were no reports of casualties.

Nigeria, which normally produces 2.5 million barrels a day, is Africa’s leading oil exporter and supplies about 10% of U.S. oil.

On Friday, Shell shut down a facility pumping 37,800 barrels of crude daily after an unexplained fire at a nearby oil well. And the firm has yet to restore 106,000 daily barrels lost when a major pipeline supplying its Forcados export terminal was hit in a similar wave of attacks last month.

In an e-mail Saturday, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta claimed responsibility for the attacks, including the raid in which militants abducted three Americans, two Egyptians, two Thais, one Briton and one Filipino.

The group, which claims to be fighting for a greater local share of the country’s oil wealth, said the attacks were carried out in retaliation for assaults last week by military helicopters.

More than 40 militants overpowered military guards before dawn Saturday and seized the foreigners from a barge belonging to Houston-based oil services company Willbros, which was laying pipeline for Shell, a Willbros official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

In Houston, Willbros spokesman Michael Collier confirmed that nine employees had been taken. “We have not had any communication with those involved. Right now, we’re in the process of contacting the families,” he said.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Noel Clay called for the hostages’ unconditional release.

A Nigerian government statement said President Olusegun Obasanjo met Saturday with security chiefs, governors of states from the oil region and the head of Shell’s operations in Nigeria.