LAGOS (AFP) — Southern Nigerian militants said Monday they had attacked a second Niger Delta oil installation in 24 hours, after declaring an all-out "oil war" as part of a campaign for greater autonomy for the region.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said it had destroyed Royal Dutch Shell's Alakiri flow station in the southern Rivers State, while a military official said the assault was repelled.
Shell confirmed the attack in which it said one security guard was killed and four people wounded, while an industry source said more than 100 oil staffers had been evacuated from their work sites in the region.
Without going into details, a Shell spokeswoman told AFP the company had "down-manned" some of its field locations as a precautionary measure.
An industry source described the attack on Alakiri as "serious."
However the attack failed to influence the oil market, where crude prices plunged to seven-month lows below 93 dollars on prospects of weaker energy demand amid a worsening global financial crisis after Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy.
The Anglo-Dutch oil giant's facility was set alight just after midnight with "dynamite and other explosives," but "the attack was beaten back," military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Musa Sagir told AFP.
Sagir said armed men who arrived on a dozen or so speedboats had exchanged fire with government troops in the second attack on a foreign oil installation in 24 hours.
He said the war declaration by MEND was militants' "propaganda."
"Our personnel have successfully repelled attacks against their positions at Soku and Alakiri in Rivers where the group attacked Shell facilities.
"We did not record any death or injury as a result of the attack. We anticipated such attack and prepared for it," Sagir told the Nigerian news agency NAN.
MEND said in an email to the media: "Heavily armed fighters from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta stormed the facility and have razed it to the ground as promised."
It was not immediately possible confirm claims on either side.
The Alakiri attack followed a raid on Chevron's Robertkiri facility, also in Rivers State, in the early hours of Sunday.
Chevron said it had no information to suggest that it was specifically targeted and said no expatriate workers were involved in the incident.
It said current production was not affected as the facility had already been shut down.
MEND said Sunday that its "war" was in response to what it called unprovoked air and sea attacks by the army the day before on one of its positions.
"MEND reiterates its previous warnings to all oil workers in the entire Niger Delta region to evacuate from oil facilities and halt production with immediate effect or they will have themselves to blame."
It warned all oil industry vessels to anchor on the high seas or divert to a different destination rather than risk destruction by coming into port.
Security has worsened markedly in oil-rich southern Nigeria since MEND emerged in early 2006, multiplying attacks, kidnappings of foreign oil workers and sabotage of both land and offshore facilities.
In the Niger Delta, an area of creeks and swamps the size of Scotland, MEND's superior knowledge of the terrain often gives it the edge over the regular army.
The group has caused Nigeria to lose one quarter of its oil production and cede its place as the biggest crude oil producer in Africa to Angola recently taking that title.
Oil from the Delta accounts for 90 percent of Nigeria's foreign currency earnings and MEND says it is fighting for a larger share of that revenue to go to local populations.
In June, the group attacked Bonga, Royal Dutch Shell's flagship deepwater field.
Sited 120 kilometres (75 miles) from Nigeria's coast, Bonga had been seen as safely out of the reach of militant raids.
Little is known of the resources and numbers of the apparently well-equipped group that presents itself as the champion of Nigeria's 14 million Ijaw people.
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