Soldiers kill four protesters at oil terminal, activists say

Nigerian troops on Friday shot and killed four villagers who were protesting at the main export terminal run by ChevronTexaco in the Niger Delta, one of the demonstration's organisers said. More than 200 protesters from the village of Ugborodo near Warri stormed the Escravos plant just before dawn to demand a fairer share of the 300,000 barrels of crude oil that are pumped out every day. "Soldiers shot at them, killing four and injuring three others," Helen Joe, one of the activists' leaders, told IRIN by phone. ChevronTexaco's Nigerian subsidiary said in a statement that its Escravos facilities had been "forcibly entered" and they had reported the incident to the security forces "who have since contained it." The company declined to give further details and did not confirm the deaths or the injuries. The ethnic Itsekiri villagers from Ugborodo accuse ChevronTexaco of reneging on promises of amenities and jobs that were made in the wake of a similar protest in July 2002. During that protest, disgruntled locals camped out at the terminal, stopping oil exports for 10 days. "Whatever they promised they never fulfilled, that's why the community is very angry," said Helen Joe. Oil operations in the 70,000 sq km Niger Delta, which accounts for nearly all of Nigeria's daily oil exports of 2.5 million barrels, have increasingly become the target of attacks. Since the July 2002 protest, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has deployed thousands of troops to guard vital oil facilities, which are classed as assets vital to economic security. More than 90 percent of oil production in Nigeria is generated by joint ventures with international oil companies in which the government has the majority stake. The government has a 60 percent stake in ChevronTexaco holdings in Nigeria, the third biggest operator in the country. Similar joint ventures are run with Royal Dutch/Shell, ExxonMobil, Total and Agip. Since 1970, the country has earned US$320 billion from oil sucked out of the Niger Delta, but its seven million residents are among the poorest in Nigeria. In the face of mismanagement of oil wealth by a succession of Nigerian regimes, restive inhabitants have tended to target the oil companies as the only visible face of government in their remote districts. In 1998, two unarmed protestors were shot and killed by soldiers at another ChevronTexaco oil platform. A lawsuit has been filed in the US charging ChevronTexaco with responsibility for the deaths because they had invited the troops onto the site to quell the disturbance.