Cape Town (Platts)--3Jul2007

Royal Dutch Shell Tuesday said it has no plans to abandon Nigeria despite
the ongoing violence in the Niger Delta but said the theft of crude oil, known
as illegal oil bunkering, still poses a problem for the country's biggest
producer.

     Shell Petroleum Development Co's general manger, Western Division, Cor
Zeggllar, said the illegal oil bunkering and damage to 500 of its flow lines
had cost the company tens of millions of dollars since early 2006 when
militants demanding a larger share of the oil and gas resources launched a
spate of attacks on oil facilities.

      "Shell has no intention to leave Niger Delta. We are now in the process
of re-entering again in the area where we have already established small
production," Zeggllar said, quoted in Nigeria's ThisDay newspaper Tuesday.

     "One of the areas that concerns us is the illegal bunkering that is still
taking place in a number of areas and it is creating significant environmental
damage and it is also creating irreversible damage to our reservoirs," he
said.

     Illegal oil bunkering has become a profitable business in the Niger
Delta, home to Nigeria's lucrative oil and gas industry. The bunkerers tap
directly into pipelines away from oil company facilities, and connect from the
pipes to barges that are hidden in small creeks.

     The product is often smuggled to neighboring states although the
government has in recent years taken measures to clamp down on the theft by
closing borders with countries like Benin. Occasionally, oil has been spilled
from the vandalized pipelines into the creeks, and communities plunged into
violent conflict with one another over compensation payments.