Italian oil company Agip SpA (AGI.YY) said Sunday 65,000 barrels a day is shut-in after a weekend attack on one of its pipelines in the southern Niger Delta.
“It’s about 65,000 barrels (a day) that is shut,” an Agip official in Nigeria told Dow Jones.
Eni SpA (E), Agip’s parent company, confirmed Saturday an “act of sabotage” had downed the Tebidaba-Brass pipeline near Brass terminal in the southern delta.
Eni said in its statement Saturday that “production was immediately shut down, and the affected pipeline was isolated.”
The latest oil shut-in, which came late Friday, brings the total amount of Nigerian oil production currently unavailable to global oil markets to 631,000 barrels a day, or 26% of the country’s typical daily output.
Nigeria, the world’s eighth biggest oil exporter, usually produces about 2.4 million barrels a day.
Militants, led a group called the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, have staged a series of attacks on oil pipelines and oil-loading facilities and abducted several foreign oil workers the past four months.
Three of nine foreign oil workers kidnapped in late February are still being held.
The militants are demanding more control over oil resources, the release of two of their ethnic Ijaw leaders, and compensation payments of over $1 billion from companies like Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB) for environmental damage.
Shell, the biggest Western oil company operating in Nigeria, has borne the brunt of the attacks. The Anglo-Dutch company has shut in about 455,000 barrels a day.
Mar192006