three Americans, a Briton, two Egyptians, two Thais and one Filipino -- from a barge operated by U.S. services company Willbros during a string of attacks on Saturday which crippled Shell's 380,000-barrel-a-day Forcados loading platform and two pipelines. About 100,000 barrels a day of Forcados production was already knocked out by an earlier attack. Shell closed its 115,000 barrel-a-day offshore EA oilfield as a precaution. The military-style raids were a mirror image of attacks in December and January which hit 10 percent of Nigerian exports at one point and saw four foreign oil workers kidnapped for 19 days. The latest attacks occurred a few hours after the close of global futures markets and analysts predicted a sharp jump in prices at the open of trading on Monday. Militants said they had detected 14 military boats in the vicinity of Forcados on Sunday and that they would mount another assault shortly. "We will carry out further attacks in areas with considerable presence of Nigerian military in order to compound the embarrassment of the Nigerian military and expose their ineptitude to the world," the militants said. "Oil workers on any kind of vessel should leave the vicinity of Delta state immediately," they added.
