Bloomberg is reporting that Royal Dutch Shell Plc's venture in Nigeria said it has halted production of 455,000 barrels a day of for the fifth straight day following attacks by militants against an export terminal and an oil pipeline in the Niger River delta.
A spokesman for the militants said his group intends to shut down more than 30 percent of Nigeria's oil export capacity this month. The current shutdowns represent almost a fifth of the crude pumped in Nigeria, Africa's top oil producer.
``We are still aiming for this target and may even surpass it with one good strike,'' Jomo Gbomo, a spokesman for the militants, said via e-mail. The group hasn't begun talks with government officials about freeing nine hostages taken on Feb. 18, he said.
Shell's Nigerian venture, the Shell Petroleum Development Co. (SPDC) has no estimate when production will resume from the western Niger delta or the EA offshore field, both of which were closed by the attacks, spokesman Don Boham said in a text message from Port Harcourt. On Feb. 21, Shell extended delays on crude shipments from its Nigerian ventures and evacuated some staff from the eastern Niger delta as a ``precautionary measure,'' Boham said.
