Nigerian militants: wrecking havoc at Shell's facilities.
Mend blows up Shell wellhead
Nigeria's main militant group the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) said it had blown up a wellhead in a Shell oilfield in Delta state late yesterday, hours after President Umaru Yar'Adua announced an amnesty offer for gunmen.
Mend accused the military of going on a "punitive expedition" to hunt down suspected militants in the Agbeti community of Delta state after Yar'Adua's amnesty proclamation.
"In response ... (operation) Piper Alpha continued its rampage on the Nigerian oil industry by blowing up the second remaining wellhead of the Shell Afremo offshore oilfields in Delta state," Mend said in a statement emailed to media.
There was no immediate independent confirmation of an attack or of a military offensive.
Afremo was one of the sites Mend also claimed to have attacked in a triple raid on Sunday. It described the field as being 14 miles from an export terminal through which crude oil from Shell's Forcados fields is pumped.
A senior industry source said at the time that the location was not a deepwater installation, but a facility located in or close to the mangrove creeks, where pipelines and equipment run across broad stretches of water.
Shell has said it is checking its operations for damage from Sunday's attacks.
Mend's latest campaign of sabotage, which began just over a month ago and which it has dubbed "Hurricane Piper Alpha", has already forced at least 133,000 barrels per day of production to be shut down.
Meanwhile, Mend later claimed it attacked a Shell platform.
"Hurricane Piper Alpha has struck at the Shell Forcados platform in Delta state today ... at about 0330 hours (0230 GMT)," Mend said in a statement emailed to Reuters.
There was no immediate independent confirmation.