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Several killed in Nigerian militant oil attack
LAGOS - Several people were killed when suspected ethnic militants stormed a Nigerian oil platform on Sunday, extending a three-week spate of attacks which has hit output in the world’s eighth largest exporter. Heavily armed men invaded Royal Dutch Shell’s Benisede oil flow station in six speed boats, exchanged fire with troops, torched two housing blocks, damaged oil processing facilities and ran away left, authorities said.

Some attackers and some soldiers protecting the platform were killed in the gunfire, a top military official said. “There was an attack. There was a fight there, an exchange of fire,” Brigadier-General Elias Zamani, who heads a military task force in the southern delta, told Reuters by telephone. ”We lost some soldiers and some of the other boys were killed also.”
Just another senseless attack in paradise ...
A diplomat said recent attacks and kidnappings targeting Nigeria’s oil industry appear to be coordinated by one militant group with up to 500 members which has demanded a greater share of oil revenue for the Niger Delta and the release of two ethnic Ijaw leaders.

Shell evacuated Benisede and three other flow stations after Sunday’s attack, but oil output was unaffected because they were already closed after militants blew up a major crude oil pipeline nearby last Wednesday, the company said. However, Sunday’s attack may delay repairs to the 100,000 barrel-a-day Trans-Ramos pipeline, which had been expected to resume pumping to the Forcados tanker terminal on Monday or Tuesday, a senior industry source said.

The firefight occurred as a team of government negotiators began talking to militants holding four foreign oil workers hostage in the delta after abducting them from an offshore oilfield operated by Shell on Wednesday.
Talks musta gone well.

Posted by: Steve White 2006-01-16
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=139908