The largest oil operator in Nigeria, Royal Dutch Shell, began evacuating all staff dependants from the Niger Delta on Thursday after militants planted a car bomb in a residential compound, industry sources said.
The evacuation involves about 400 family members from company compounds in Port Harcourt, Warri and Bonny Island, but staff will stay put and oil and gas production will not be affected, the sources said. Families based in the commercial capital Lagos will also stay put.
“It’s really a precautionary step. We are not sure if this thing is going to deteriorate. If it deteriorates we will have fewer people to contend with,” a senior company executive said.
Militancy and crime have risen dramatically this year in the vast wetlands region which is home to all the OPEC member nation’s oil and gas resources.
Attacks on oil facilities and kidnappings of workers are almost a weekly occurrence, but Monday’s car bomb attack on a Shell residential compound was the last straw.
Industry executives had been expecting security to decline before landmark elections next April because elections often reignite long-standing power struggles between rival clans and militias in the lawless wetlands region.
Italian oil company Agip, a unit of ENI, has already transferred the families of its workers from the delta to Lagos.
In February Shell shut down its entire western delta operations after a series of militant attacks and kidnappings, cutting Nigerian oil output by about a fifth.