A top security source said the militants struck at about 1.30am Tuesday in a surprise attack adding that the soldiers could have been sleeping when the incident occurred.
Advertisement
The EIA said in its report that production peaked at 2.4 million bpd in 2005, but is down significantly because violence in the Niger Delta region has curbed production and forced companies to evacuate their staff.
“The evacuation is being done in categories of workers and cadres”, Cogent Ojobor, chairman of the Warri branch of the Nupeng oil labour union, said.
According to a Nigerian police spokesman, the four officers were killed in an ambush as they were heading for the Niger Delta city of Yenago. The violence has pushed Nigeria’s crude output near to a 22-year low.
In recent times, security personnel have come under serious attacks, particularly in the Niger Delta region.
A group known as the Niger Delta Avengers claimedresponsibility for the Chevron attack.
Chika Onuegbu, chairman of the Trade Union in Rivers state in the Delta, said Chevron had evacuated some staff from the Delta, after a similar move from Shell.
Crude oil sales account for around 70% of national income in Nigeria but there has not been much development in the poor Niger Delta swampland.
Shell has reportedly evacuated staff from an offshore Nigeria platform following a militant attack on a Chevron platform last week.
A group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers in February launched a campaign it called Operation Red Economy, urging revolution to wrestle the country away from the hands of the “wicked” administration of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.
Advertisement
The militancy is a further challenge for a government faced with an insurgency by the Islamist militant Boko Haram group in the northeast and violent clashes between armed nomadic herdsmen and locals over land use in various parts of the country.
