Shell, Niger Delta community reach truce

Paris (Platts)--13Dec2004

Shell Nigeria Monday said it had resolved a dispute between it and a local
community that had shut two of the company's flowstations in the Rivers State,
in the Niger Delta. "I believe a kind of truce has been reached," a company
spokeman said. 

Hundreds of Kula villagers last Sunday, invaded Shell's Ekulama
1 and 2 flowstations, forcing the company to shut in 70,000 b/d. Technical
problems at two other flowstations shut in an additional 30,000 b/d. They also
invaded a flowstation operated by ChevronTexaco, shutting in 20,000 b/d. The
end of the protest saw more than 100 oil workers, who had been trapped on
board the stations, freed, including an American and a South African. A
spokesman for the Rivers State government last week said the protesters hoped
to persuade the oil companies to spend more on local development in Kula,
which lies in coastal swamps southwest of Port Harcourt. Communities of the
southern oil-producing delta complain their elected leaders have failed to
fight poverty while tensions over oil revenues have aggravated ethnic strife.

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