Nigeria president tells army to bolster oil security

By Felix Onuah

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua has ordered the country's armed forces to tighten security in the Niger Delta and hunt down militants behind an attack on Shell's main offshore oil facility, his office said on Friday.

"The president has ... directed that security be beefed up at all oil facilities and installations in the Niger Delta to forestall further acts of terrorism by criminal elements in the region," his office said in a statement.

Nigeria's armed forces and security agencies had been told to take "all necessary action" to apprehend the militants who attacked Royal Dutch Shell's Bonga oilfield, which lies some 120 km (75 miles) offshore, in the early hours of Thursday.

The attack forced the Anglo-Dutch giant to stop production at Bonga, cutting Nigeria's oil output by a tenth and shocking an industry that thought such deepwater sites in Nigeria were relatively immune from sabotage.

Shell on Friday declared force majeure on oil shipments for June and July from Bonga, which has a nameplate capacity of 220,000 barrels per day, meaning it cannot guarantee to meet its contractual obligations.

The group that claimed responsibility for the attack -- the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) -- shrugged off the president's order over security as "empty talk" but said it was on a war footing.

"We are asking all expatriate oil workers to vacate oil facilities and living quarters in the Niger Delta while we settle our score with an insincere federal government," it said in a e-mailed statement, urging youths to sabotage oil sites.

MEND has mostly limited its strikes to bombing oil pipelines and kidnapping oil workers at onshore facilities in Nigeria.