ChevronTexaco Corp. has evacuated staff and shut down most of its oil and gas installations in Nigeria after fighting between ethnic militants and government forces appeared to be escalating on Monday. Nigeria, the fifth-largest petroleum supplier to the United States and likely a major liquefied natural gas supplier in the future, has been undergoing substantial economic reform under a new civilian administration as it transitions from a military government.

Jay Pryor, chairman of subsidiary Chevron Nigeria Ltd., said the company was evacuating its remaining workers from the Nigerian Escravos terminal and its offshore rigs “to protect them from harm.” He said, “the safety of people is our absolute priority.”

The California-based major had evacuated staff members and shut down most of its Nigerian installations after ethnic militant leaders accused the Nigerian Army of attacking a Niger Delta village near the Escravos terminal. The militants, members of the Ijaws group, have threatened to blow up 11 multi-national energy installations they claim to have captured. Bello Oboko, the Ijaw leader, repeated his group’s threat to blow up the ChevronTexaco, Royal/Dutch Shell Group and TotalFinaElf oil and gas facilities that they occupied if the Nigerian government ignores calls for electoral reforms ahead of late-April elections.

The fighting in Nigeria has already cut multi-national oil exports by an estimated 350,000 bbl/d as of Monday, about one-sixth of Nigeria’s total production of 2 million bbl/d. In Angola, where ChevronTexaco is the country’s largest oil producer, and in Nigeria, the company’s combined average production exceeds 1.1 million bbl/d. Offshore Nigeria, the company’s Agbami Field was one of the nation’s largest-ever deepwater discoveries in 1999.

In the first quarter 2003 issue of CVX, the company’s global publication, Chevron Nigeria Ltd. said it processed up to 480,000 bbl of oil and natural gas a day at the Escravos terminal in Nigeria. It also employs 2,000 in the country, with 90% of them Nigerian. ChevronTexaco, considered the country’s largest private investor, started Nigeria’s first major project to gather and process natural gas with its Escravos Gas Project 1 in 1997. It also began front-end engineering on a proposed gas-to-liquids plant in Escravos, which is designed to produce fuel and end flaring of 300 MMcf/d.

According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook 2002 on Nigeria, the African country’s former military rulers failed to diversify the economy away from overdependence on the capital-intensive oil sector, which provides 20% of gross domestic production, 95% of foreign exchange earnings, and about 65% of budgetary revenues.

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