Shell Won’t Re-Enter Nigeria’s Western Delta This Year

Royal Dutch Shell PLC is unlikely to go back into Nigeria’s troubled Western Delta this year despite the area contributing around 500,000 barrels a day to the company’s crude oil production, a Shell executive said Tuesday.

Speaking on the sidelines of an energy security conference hosted by Cambridge Energy Resources Associates here, Ann Pickard, Shell’s Africa Regional Executive Vice President for Exploration and Production, told Dow Jones Newswires that escalating violence in the Delta has shut in production for 1.5 years so far, and production is unlikely to begin in 2007.

“We won’t be back in this year,” Pickard said on the sidelines of an energy conference in Istanbul. “We’re still working with the government to re-enter the Western Delta,” she said.

Ongoing kidnappings and attacks on oil workers in the Delta have forced Shell to cut spending there by $100 million over three years, Pickard said.

Dow Jones Newswires