WARRI, Nigeria (AP) – Armed militants launched a wave of attacks across Nigeria’s troubled southern delta region yesterday, blowing up oil installations and seizing nine foreigners in violence that cut oil exports in the West African nation by 16 per cent.

Royal Dutch Shell official Donald Boham said militants attacked the Forcados oil loading platform, forcing the company to shut down a facility that moves out 400,000 barrels of oil daily.

Nigeria is Africa’s leading exporter, normally producing 2.5 million barrels of oil a day.

In an e-mail to The Associated Press, the militant Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta claimed responsibility for the attacks as well as a raid during which militants abducted three Americans, two Egyptians, two Thais, one Briton and one Filipino.

The group, which claims to be fighting for a greater local share of the country’s oil wealth, said the attacks were carried out in retaliation for military helicopter assaults in the area last week. The militants threatened more violence would follow on “a grander scale”.

A day earlier, oil prices jumped more than US$1 and settled near US$60 a barrel on supply concerns sparked by the group’s threat to wage war on foreign oil interests.

A similar wave of attacks and hostage takings in January cut exports by nearly 10 per cent, or 221,000 barrels daily. Some 106,000 of the lost output has not been restored because a major pipeline supplying the Forcados terminal, damaged previously by militants, has yet to be fixed.

After yesterday’s attack at Forcados, Boham said a fire was quickly put out, but loading operations were suspended. “We can’t load because there is some damage to the loading platform,” he said. There was no word on casualties.

Forcados serves as a berth for tankers loading oil and accounts for all oil the company loads in the western delta. Shell is the leading exporter in Nigeria, accounting for a little under half of total exports.

The foreigners were seized before dawn from a barge belonging to the US company Wilbros, which was working on a contract to lay pipelines for Shell, a Wilbros official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media. More than 40 militants overpowered military guards before fleeing.