Chevron Pulling Out Hundreds of Nigeria Oil Workers

U.S. oil major Chevron Corp. will immediately begin withdrawing hundreds of workers and contractors from Nigeria’s offshore waters due to recent militant violence against foreign companies in Africa’s biggest oil producing country, a company official said Friday.

“These actions are beginning as we speak,” the Chevron official told Dow Jones Newswires, declining to be named.


The official said the company’s actions were not seen affecting Chevron’s Nigeria oil production, which has already been sliced recently due to militant attacks.

The official said the company’s moves were a “temporary suspension of non-essential” work but added that the number of workers impacted would be in “the hundreds.” Many of the affected workers are contractors, the official said.

The withdraw of many Chevron workers from their normal operations marks a sharp escalation of events the past two weeks in Nigeria where militants and criminals have abducted dozens of foreign oil workers, including a number of Chevron’s, and felled oil production by bombing energy infrastructure.

Dow Jones Newswires