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Niger Delta militant attack shuts down Chevron facility - company source
The clan leader of Gbarantoru-Ekepetiama Kingdom, Baburaye Dakolo, reacts during an interview with Reuters outside his home in Gbarantoru village near Yenagoa, in Nigeria's Delta region, May 18, 2016. PHOTO BY REUTERS/Akintunde Akinleye
By Tife Owolabi
26/05/2016
YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Chevron's onshore activities in Nigeria's Niger Delta have been shut down by a militant attack at its Escravos terminal, a company source said on Thursday.
A militant group called the Niger Delta Avengers, which has told oil firms to leave the delta before the end of May, said late on Wednesday that it had blown up the facility's mains electricity feed.
"It is a crude line which means all activities in Chevron are grounded," the source told Reuters, without elaborating.
A Twitter account with the group's name said late on Wednesday: "We Warned #Chevron<https://twitter.com/hashtag/Chevron... but they didn't Listen. @NDAvengers<https://twitter.com/NDAvengers> just blow up the Escravos tank farm Main Electricity Feed PipeLine."
A Chevron spokeswoman in the United States said on Thursday that it was against policy to comment on the safety and security of personnel and operations.
The Avengers and other militants, who say they are fighting for a greater share of oil profits, an end to pollution and independence for the region, have intensified attacks in recent months, pushing oil output to its lowest in more than 20 years and compounding the problems faced by Africa's largest economy.
Abuja has responded by moving in army reinforcements but British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond said this month that President Muhammadu Buhari needed to deal with the root causes.
Delta residents, some of whom sympathize with the militants, have long complained of poverty in an area producing oil accounting for 70 percent of national income.
Buhari has extended an amnesty deal signed with militants in 2009 that stepped up funding for the region. But he has cut funding for the amnesty program and canceled contracts with former militants to protect the pipelines they used to attack.
Industry sources said that Escravos onshore production accounts for roughly a third of its total output, on average 3.8 million barrels per month (bpm) in 2014, according to the latest available data from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
Projected exports for the first half of 2016 averaged 167,000 barrels per day (bpd) or about five million bpm.
Escravos production was already down by more than 40,000 bpd after a May 5 militant attack on a Chevron offshore facility.
Increased violence over the past few weeks has also made international buyers more reluctant to buy Nigerian crude due to fears of loading delays and cancellations.
(Additional reporting by Libby George in London Writing by Ulf Laessing and Ed Cropley; Editing by Louise Ireland)
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