Lagos (Platts)--19Mar2009

Armed militants have sabotaged a second Shell operated oil pipeline in
Nigeria's Niger Delta, cutting crude supply to the company's Warri River flow
station, the Joint Military Task Force said Thursday.

"An oil pipeline belonging to the Shell Petroleum Development Company has
been vandalised at Ugbodede, opposite the Warri River flow station," task
force spokesman Colonel Rabe Abubakar said in a statement.

The pipeline is 15 km from the SPDC Jetty.

"We have received the report of the attack on our pipeline and we are
investigating," Shell spokesman Precious Okolobo told Platts in Lagos.

The volume of oil lost could not be immediately confirmed.

It was the second major sabotage of a Shell facility in the western
division of the Niger Delta in three weeks, following the attack on the
trans-Escravos pipeline, which feeds into Shell's Forcados terminal, February
28, which forced Shell to shut in around 70,000 b/d of production.

The Niger Delta is home to the world's eighth-biggest oil industry,
exporting about 2.1 million b/d, but rebels have led a campaign of sabotage
since early 2006 to push demands for greater local control over oil revenues.
--staff, newsdesk@platts.com