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Chevron Restarts Production at 2nd Platform

Posted on: Tuesday, 27 September 2005, 12:00 CDT

By DANIEL BALINT-KURTI

LAGOS, Nigeria - U.S. company Chevron Corp. has restarted production at both oil platforms it shut down due to threats by a militia last week, a company spokesman said Tuesday.

The restarting of 8,000-barrels-per-day flow station Idama late Monday and another station earlier Monday means Chevron has now resumed output of the 27,000 barrels per day it cut off last week.

"It has remained calm for the last couple of days. There is enough security for us to restart operations," said Chevron spokesman Deji Haastrup.

The Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, a southern militia, had said it would blow up oil facilities over the arrest of its leader on treason charges, but later rescinded its threat. In an e-mail to The Associated Press Tuesday, the group said without explanation that it had "ceased all hostilities with the government of the Nigerian state."

The group's leader, Moujahid Dokubo-Asari, is being held over a call for the breakup of Nigeria he had made in a newspaper interview.

The southern Niger delta accounts for the bulk of OPEC member Nigeria's roughly 2.5 million barrels-per-day crude output. Nigeria is the world's eighth largest oil exporter and the fifth main supplier to the United States.

For years, local communities have been demanding a greater share of revenues from the oil flowing from their land.

Disputes over oil money have grown increasingly violent, with armed militias killing hundreds and calling for secession.

Chevron was forced to make much more drastic cuts in oil output in 2003, when an ethnic Ijaw rebellion in the Niger delta shut down 40 percent of the country's oil output.

The oil giant has so far only restarted production of 18,000 barrels per day around the oil city of Warri, of the 140,000 barrels per day shut off in 2003, Haastrup said.

He added that Chevron is working on repairing sabotaged facilities, and expects to have a further 60,000 barrels per day back into production by early next year. All lost output around Warri is set to be restarted by early 2007, he said.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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