Soldiers kill two gunmen in attack on Shell base

Nigerian soldiers killed two gunmen who tried to launch a speedboat-attack on the main base of the oil giant Shell in southern oil town of Warri, an army spokesman said on Friday. Major Said Ahmed said the gunmen attempted to steal fuel barges anchored in the Shell compound on Thursday night. He said the attackers had opened fire after they were challenged by soldiers on guard there. “They fired, our soldiers returned fire, killing two and injuring two others,” he told IRIN. Ahmed said the attack was not part of the often violent agitation by inhabitants of the Niger Delta for a greater share of the region’s oil wealth. “They were just thieves,” he said. A Shell official confirmed the incident. He told IRIN the gunmen were probably linked to criminal gangs that use barges and other small vessels to siphon crude oil from the pipelines that criss-cross the swampy delta for sale to tankers lying offshore Last year the government estimated that more than 10 percent of Nigeria’s daily oil production of about two million barrels a day, was lost to gangs of oil thieves through this illegal trade known as “bunkering.” The bunkering gangs have flooded the Niger Delta with automatic weapons, aggravating the casualties in local tribal conflicts and making the delta one of Nigeria’s most dangerous regions to live in. Foreign oil companies operating in the Niger Delta face intense hostility from local people who accuse their joint ventures with the government of denying them a share in the oil wealth that lies beneath their feet. More than 200 protesters from a delta village overan Shell's Erhiemu oil pumping station near Warri on Tuesday morning and forced it to shut down. The men, women and children protested that they remained stuck in poverty despite living in an area rich with oil. The villagers said they would force the facility, which pumps up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day from nearby wells, to remain closed until Shell kept a promise to rebuild a road that links their community to the outside world.