Nigeria's Daukoru sees no imminent restart of shut-in oil output

Lagos (Platts)--28Mar2006

Nigerian oil production currently shut in due to unrest and violence in
the Niger Delta is unlikely to be restarted very soon, the country's oil
minister Edmund Daukoru said Tuesday.
Over 600,000 b/d of Nigerian output is currently shut in, and despite the
release Monday of three oil workers taken hostage in the Delta, Daukoru said
it would take "a while" before production could be restored.
"I had estimated that in two weeks' time some of the production shut in
pre-emptively would be back. But we had another explosion which shut in
production of another 80,000 b/d," Daukoru said in an interview. "It will take
a while now, as we need time to inspect the damaged facilities," he said.
The bulk of the lost output is operated by Royal Dutch Shell, but last
week a further 75,000 b/d of Brass crude production operated by Italy's Eni
was shut in after an attack on a pipeline. Eni said March 20 it hoped to
restarts the production by the end of this month.
Shell Monday welcomed the release of the hostages, who had been working
for Willbros under contract to Shell, but added that it had no plans to resume
production until it could guarantee the safety of staff in the area.
The militants who have been attacking oil facilities in the Delta vowed
Monday not to allow a resumption of oil production until the government met a
set of demands, including the release of ethnic Ijaw leaders Asari Dokubo and
Diepreye Alamieyeseigha as well as the payment of $1.5 billion compensation by
Shell to Ijaw communities for environmental pollution.
Daukoru said the government would deploy the same persuasive methods it
used in getting the hostages released, to stave off the militants' fresh
threat to oil production.
"The same initiatives used in getting the hostages released will be used
to contain these threats. We will get the Ijaw leaders to convince these boys
that what they are doing is destroying investments in the area," he said.

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