Tougher security needed for Nigeria's offshore oil

By Nick Tattersall

ABUJA (Reuters) - Oil firms operating off Nigeria need tougher security measures like floating blast-proof barriers to prevent the sort of attack that crippled Royal Dutch Shell's main offshore facility, security experts say.

Militants in speedboats attacked Shell's Bonga field 120 km (75 miles) from the coast on Thursday, forcing the firm to stop production and shocking an industry that thought such deepwater sites were relatively immune from sabotage.

The attack showed that existing security measures at offshore facilities -- including anti-climb paint, blast walls meant to withstand an industrial explosion and 24 hour patrols by naval personnel -- were not sufficient, experts said.

New technology including long range acoustic warning devices (LRAD), originally intended for U.S. warships, blast-proof floating steel walls and rapid patrol boats with mounted machine-guns would be needed to protect against such attacks, they said.

"The truth is that oil companies are not really built for warfare. They're not really prepared for this kind of incident," a private security contractor in the oil industry told Reuters.

Security sources described the Bonga attack as astonishingly bold. The militants used small boats to travel by night, through notoriously strong currents, a distance more than three times the width of the Strait of Dover separating England and France.

The distance alone of deepwater sites like Bonga from the Nigerian coast meant that oil companies had assumed they would not be subjected to the level of attacks that have cut output in the shallow creeks of the Niger Delta in recent years.

"At the moment, the main operators who are really putting a lot of time, money and effort into security are those relatively close to the shore, up to around 10 km," said a security expert working in the oil industry.