Nigeria: Fire still blazing in Shell Oil pipeline

Investigators are probing the source of a fire that was still blazing today on a ruptured Royal Dutch Shell oil pipeline in southern Nigeria as the company announced further petroleum production cuts.

Local residents near the conduit in Nigeria’s strife-riven south said suspected militia fighters blew up the pipeline southwest of Port Harcourt yesterday with dynamite, sparking a conflagration that killed eight.

Shell spokeswoman Caroline Wittgen said she couldn’t confirm any deaths or injuries, citing the ongoing investigation. She said the pipeline was still ablaze today.

The company said its daily output reduction reached 180,000 barrels per day, up from 170,000 a day earlier, after the company and its local partners shut down a flow station. There was no word on when full production would be restored.

In trading today, crude prices rose on the news coupled with an expected release of petroleum-supply data in the US.

Nigeria normally has daily total output of about 2.5 million barrels. Shell and its local partners normally produce about one million barrels per day.

Despite the valuable crude pumped from Nigeria’s south, the region remains one of the country’s poorest and is frequently the site of violence as rival groups compete for power – which means access to oil revenues.