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BLOOMBERG: Shell Says Oil Exports From Nigeria's EA Field Will Be Delayed: Tuesday 17 Jan 2006

Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe's second- biggest oil company, said oil shipments from the offshore EA oil field in Nigeria will be delayed by technical problems.

Shell declared force majeure today for the EA field shipments, Lisa Givert, a spokeswoman in London, said in a telephone interview. Force majeure is a legal step that lets a company miss contracted deliveries because of circumstances beyond its control.

Earlier Shell said it had to close the EA field a day after restarting it last week because of technical problems. The EA field, which has a capacity of 115,000 barrels a day, was originally shut down on Jan. 12, a day after four foreign oil workers were kidnapped from a boat near the field. The following day, technical problems forced the company to close the field.

The technical problems ``have not been resolved,'' Givert said. ``The technical failure has to do with communication between the ballast and cargo systems.''

Shell's Nigerian joint venture is also losing 106,000 barrels a day because of a Jan. 11 explosion at a pipeline in the Brass Creek area of the Niger River delta. Together, the two losses represent about 9 percent of total oil output in Nigeria, Africa's biggest producer.

To contact the reporters on this story:

Karl Maier in Rome at kmaier2@bloomberg.net

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