Militant attack closes Shell oil facility

LAGOS, Nigeria (CNN) -- Oil production was shut down at an offshore Nigerian facility after an armed attack Thursday by a powerful militant group from the Delta region, Shell said.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, said it conducted the attack and seized an American oil worker.

The Bonga oil facility is 65 miles offshore in the Gulf of Guinea and produces around 200,000 barrels of crude oil a day.

"The location for today's attack was deliberately chosen to remove any notion that off-shore oil exploration is far from our reach," MEND said in a statement.

"The oil companies and their collaborators do not have any place to hide in conducting their nefarious activities."

It is the latest incident of oil-industry sabotage in petroleum-rich Nigeria, the fourth largest supplier of oil to the United States. Such incidents are one of the reasons for the record oil prices.

MEND said in a statement that its main target was the "main computerized control room responsible for coordinating the entire crude oil export operations," but that effort was not successful.

"Our detonation engineers could not gain access to blow it up, but decided against smoking out the occupants by burning down the facility to avoid loss of life," the group said.

MEND said that it captured an American from an oil services company called Tidex, so the Nigerian military doesn't slough off "this humiliating breach" as an accident.

"This man was supposed to only be released in exchange for all Niger Delta hostages being held in northern Nigeria by the Nigerian government," MEND said.

The militant group added it has decided to free the man soon "because the criminals in the government and state security want to use this opportunity to make money from ransom."

MEND is warning oil and gas tankers to avoid Nigerian waters. "Our next visit will be different as the facility will not be spared. We therefore ask all workers in the Bonga fields to evacuate for their safety as the military can not protect them," it said.

MEND has bombed pipelines and kidnapped hundreds of foreign oil workers, typically releasing them unharmed, sometimes after receiving a ransom payment.

The rebel group hopes to secure a greater share of oil wealth for people in the Niger Delta, where most of Nigeria's reserves are but where more than 70 percent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day.

The Nigerian government has proposed a peace summit to find a solution to the region's problems, but an immediate resolution does not appear in sight.

CNN's Christian Purefoy in Lagos, Nigeria contributed to this report