Gunmen clash with Nigerian navy in oil delta

LAGOS (Reuters) - Gunmen attacked a Nigerian navy position in the southern state of Bayelsa in the restive Niger Delta on Monday, in an area close to a flow station operated by Royal Dutch Shell, the military and militants said.

The main militant group in the region, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), said it was not involved but said the navy had opened fire on youths who then regrouped and attacked the military position.

MEND said three navy personnel were killed and four abducted and two navy gunboats were seized. The group said in a statement e-mailed to media it would intervene to secure the release of the captured servicemen.

A spokesman for the joint military taskforce confirmed the attack but said navy personnel had only sustained minor injuries, there were no fatalities on the military side, and that oil facilities in the area were intact.

"The militants got away with four speedboats belonging to Shell," military spokesman Colonel Rabe Abubakar said, pledging the security forces would recapture the stolen vessels.

Attacks on industry facilities by militants or saboteurs seeking to steal crude oil are frequent in the creeks of the Niger Delta, one of the world's largest wetlands and home to Africa's biggest oil and gas industry.

But direct confrontation with the military has been relatively rare in recent months.

President Umaru Yar'Adua said 10 days ago he was ready to grant amnesty to gunmen in the Niger Delta if they agreed to lay down their weapons but also said security chiefs would meet soon to work out "new rules of engagement" for the region.

Some within the security forces are thought to favour a military option, viewing the militants as plain criminals, while some politicians favour negotiation, seeing a degree of legitimacy in their grievances.

"The outcome of this incident can clearly give an insight into what a bigger battle will turn out to be like when the military launches its much talked about invasion," said MEND, which has rejected Yar'Adua's amnesty offer.

The unrest in the delta has cut Nigeria's oil output, forced foreign oil giants to remove all but essential expatriate staff from the region and eaten into the OPEC member's foreign earnings, exacerbating the impact of the global slowdown.

Finance Minister Mansur Muhtar said last month oil production so far this year had been averaging around 1.6 million barrels per day, almost half the country's installed capacity of 3 million bpd, partly due to the unrest.

Oil trade sources say Nigeria's export levels will be significantly above that figure in April and May, averaging around 1.88 million bpd, but still far from the West African country's full potential.

Shell said on Sunday it had shut down flowstations feeding into its Trans-Niger oil pipeline, also in the Niger Delta, as a precautionary measure after a fire at a manifold. It was not immediately clear what caused the blaze.

(Reporting by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Sophie Hares)