Nigeria attack stops Shell's Bonga offshore oil

By Nick Tattersall

ABUJA (Reuters) - Militants in speedboats attacked Royal Dutch Shell's main offshore facility in Nigeria on Thursday, cutting the country's oil output by a tenth and raising fears of a new campaign against deepwater installations.

The strike on Shell's Bonga field, which lies some 120 km (75 miles) off the coast and has a nameplate capacity of 220,000 barrels per day, forced the Anglo-Dutch giant to stop output from the $3.6 billion (1.8 billion pound) facility.

The rebel Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) -- which until now has mainly blown up oil pipelines and kidnapped expatriate workers in the shallow creeks of southern Nigeria -- warned the attack may not be its last in deep waters.

"The location for today's attack was deliberately chosen to remove any notion that offshore oil exploration is far from our reach," the group said in an e-mailed statement, telling oil firms to remove expatriate workers from Nigeria.

"Oil and gas tankers are also warned to avoid Nigerian waters. They stand the risk of laden crude oil or natural gas tankers being attacked," the group said.

International oil companies have been increasingly focusing on offshore projects in Nigeria, partly to offset the risk to onshore operations in the Niger Delta, where a violent campaign of sabotage has cut output by a fifth in recent years.

After the Bonga attack, MEND gunmen came across a separate oil supply vessel and seized its U.S. captain -- working for oil services firm Tidex, contracted to Chevron -- in what security sources said appeared to be an opportunistic strike.

MEND later said it had released the man to his employers.