The Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell has reported a loss of 760,000 barrels of oil in daily output following four days of violent fighting in southern Nigeria's Niger Delta region.
"The company has recorded additional loss of 46,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil because we had to close more flow stations in the crisis area," a company spokesman said.
On Sunday, Shell shut down two flow stations - Jones Creek and Egwa 1 - after youths from the Ijaw ethnic group clashed with Nigerian naval patrols in the swamps south of Warri.
Shell, Nigeria's leading oil operator and a joint venture partner of the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), accounts for one-third of the west African country's daily output of 2.018 million barrels.
Shell and the US oil major ChevronTexaco operate in the Warri area, a troubled region of coastal swamps 200 miles east of Lagos.
ChevronTexaco said in a statement today that two contract workers were hit by stray bullets during the fighting. It said one of them died on yesterday while the other is in a critical condition in hospital.
The company did not say if the crisis has affected its operations.
AFP