1:21 PM PST Monday 

ChevronTexaco Corp. and two other multinationals said Monday they have shut oil production totaling more than 40 percent of Nigeria's 2.2 million barrel-per-day crude output in response to growing violence in the oil-rich Niger Delta, the Reuters and Dow Jones news services reported.

ChevronTexaco officials at corporate headquarters in San Ramon said the production cuts represented 7 percent of the company's worldwide oil-equivalent production.

The growing Nigerian production losses further diminished world crude supplies reduced by the war in Iraq and Venezuela's failure to fully recover from the oilworkers' strike earlier this year. They also threaten Nigeria's economy, which depends on oil income as the world's eighth-largest exporter and the United States' fifth-largest supplier.

Nigerian military officials have ordered the delta-area oil facilities evacuated and assigned Gen. Michael Ogomudia, the Army chief of staff, to the region to lead the fight to quell what has been described as Nigeria's worst outbreak of violence in 60 years, according to media reports. The fighting between members of the Ijaw and Itsekiri tribes come on the eve of next month's national elections in Africa's largest nation. The unrest also is attributed to discontent over the oil companies' concessions to local residents.

The total shut-ins reported by ChevronTexaco, Royal Dutch/Shell Group and TotalFinaElf have reached 817,500 bpd, or roughly the same amount processed daily by the East Bay's five refineries, which use 800,000 bpd when they are running at full throughput capacity. None of the East Bay refineries, including the 165,000-bpd Martinez refinery owned by Shell or ChevronTexaco's 225,000-bpd Richmond refinery, uses Nigerian crude.

ChevronTexaco said it had shut down 440,000 bpd of production. Shell, which accounts for more than half of Nigeria's production, said it has shut a total of 370,000 bpd. Shell also has declared a force majeure, warning customers it may not be able to meet March and April crude contracts. French multinational TotalFinaElf said it has shut 7,500 bpd, according to media reports.

Marin? Tuesday March 25, 5:19 AM

Venezuelan Ambassador to the U.S. Bernardo Alvarez said Venezuela has been talking to many companies interested in using its crude to help fill the SPR. "What's important is that we have the political will to contribute," Alvarez said.

The ambassador said Venezuela plans to discuss its production levels with the U.S. Energy Information Administration to try to persuade the statistical agency its oil output has recovered to pre-December levels.

Marin said PdVSA is in talks with refinery services company UOP LLC and it's getting technical assistance from Mitsubishi Corp. (J.MIB) to resume full operations at the El Palito refinery. He said that plans for a liquefied natural gas export development by Royal Dutch/Shell Group (RD) and Mitsubishi remain "very serious."

Marin described the loss since November of about 17,000 PdVSA staff, or 43% of the prior workforce, as largely complementing the company's prior plans to downsize, but he said he would have preferred not being forced to restructure the company by December's labor walkouts.

Among structural changes the oil monopoly has made are reducing its Caracas corporate headquarters to no more than 400 staff and shifting responsibilities to its eastern and western producing regions, he said. PdVSA is forming a sales division in the east to handle all crude oil marketing and another in the west to handle all refined products marketing, he said.

Marin said he expects Venezuelan crude oil production to reach about 3.1 million b/d over the next few months. Venezuela has an understanding within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to produce above its quota of 2.819 million b/d to make up for the exports it lost in December and January.

-By Campion Walsh, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9291; campion.walsh@dowjones.com

<a href=www.zwire.com>NEPA News March 24, 2003

Janet Kelly, editor in chief of The Daily Journal newspaper and a political analyst, has died. She was 56. Kelly, a native of Philadelphia, was found dead Monday in Caracas. The cause of death was under investigation.

A graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Kelly had lived in Venezuela for more than 20 years.

Kelly served as dean of Public Policy at the Institute of Higher Administration Studies in Caracas, where she had been a professor since 1982. There, she strengthened the institution's curriculum, research programs and publications in public policy.

In February, Kelly led a group that purchased The Daily Journal, Caracas' English-language newspaper.

Kelly was considered one of Venezuela's most respected political analysts. She wrote numerous books, academic articles and newspaper columns on Venezuelan politics, and she served on the board of the Venezuelan American Chamber of Commerce.

Kelly is survived by two children, Juan Pablo and Daniel Escobar.

Dow Jones NewsWires Tuesday March 25, 3:00 AM By Selina Williams OF DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

LONDON (Dow Jones)--Nigeria's worst ethnic violence in years sent shock waves through global oil markets Monday as three supermajors suspended production at their facilities in the Niger Delta and withdrew staff on safety fears.

The Nigerian subsidiaries of Royal Dutch/Shell Group (RD), ChevronTexaco Corp. (CVX) and TotalFinaElf (TOT) have halted production totaling 817,500 barrels a day - close to 40% of Nigeria's output of some 2 million b/d - as violence between rival communities spirals out of control ahead of presidential elections on April 19.

Shell and Chevron have also declared a force majeure - a formal notification to customers that they might not be able to lift their contracted crude when scheduled - on Bonny, Forcados and Escravos crude grades.

"It's a grave situation and the long-term implications of this are yet to be considered," said a Chevron spokesman speaking by telephone from Nigeria.

The loss of crude from the fifth-largest oil supplier to the U.S. comes at a time when global oil markets nervously eye the prospect of a prolonged war in Iraq that could have a more significant impact on supplies than initially anticipated.

It also comes as U.S. commercially held petroleum stocks are close to rock-bottom levels after a strike in Venezuela and as U.S. refiners are keen to get their hands on the light sweet Nigerian crudes that are so good for refining into gasoline ahead of the summer driving season.

The shutdowns will cost the companies and the country dear in lost revenues.

At a price of around $25 a barrel Nigeria's lost oil output is worth more than $20 million a day. That is a hefty amount for a country that receives some 90% of its foreign exchange earnings from oil exports.

But the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which has pledged to meet any shortfall in global oil supplies, played down disruptions to output by Nigeria, an OPEC member.

Events such as those in Nigeria "have happened in many countries, many times...this is a temporary event," said OPEC President Abdullah al-Attiyah in comments to Cable News Network earlier Monday.

"Nigerian oil will come back to the market," al-Attiyah added.

Technical Problems May Stall Restart Of Wells

But a prolonged shutdown of Nigeria's oil wells could make it difficult to restart them as pressure drops and other technical measures need to be taken to restart output, said David Fyfe, oil supply analyst at the Paris-based International Energy Agency.

"The longer they're off, the lower the pressure drops and the more work they'll need to get them up and running again," Fyfe said.

For the moment, none of the companies know when their production will return.

Shell and Chevron have evacuated several hundred staff, both local and expatriate, out of the afflicted region in the northern and southern swamps in the western Niger Delta.

Expatriate staff had the option to go home when they were evacuated and several took the opportunity, said spokesmen from the oil companies. Other personnel were at the end of their rotation period and were due to leave anyway.

Further disruptions could occur as Nigeria's two most powerful oil workers unions, the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers Union, or Nupeng, and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, or Pengassan, threatened to withdraw members, fearing for their safety.

"We have told them (the companies) to evacuate our members from that place until there is peace," Nupeng General Secretary Joseph Akinlaja told Dow Jones Newswires by telephone.

Pengassan General Secretary Kenneth Narebor said the union would be forced to withdraw members if the violence continued. The violence showed no signs of abating Monday.

Government troops have been trying to restore order in the region, but with little effect.

According to the Associated Press, Ijaw militant activist leader Dan Ekpebide repeated threats Monday to blow up six ChevronTexaco installations - along with three Shell and two TotalFinaElf facilities that have been captured by militants - unless the Nigerian military halts its crackdown and pulls out.

Clashes between the Ijaws, the largest ethnic group in the Niger Delta, and minority Itsekiris over recent weeks have left scores dead and dozens injured.

When asked if there would be more shut ins in other locations or if violence could spread to the eastern Niger Delta, a regional Shell official in the area's oil town Warri said: "We don't know - it's clearly beyond our control."

Some analysts suggested that additional output from fields in the eastern Niger Delta could be brought on line to cover for the loss.

But the Energy Information Administration in the U.S. scotched that idea in a report Monday, when it estimated the country has no spare capacity left.

The near-$9 freefall in global oil prices in recent days on expectations of a swift end to conflict in Iraq has been stalled in part by the troubles in Nigeria, dealers said.

"Nigeria's becoming the main focus today," said one broker at London's International Petroleum Exchange where European Brent crude futures are traded.

"The fear is it could last for a while, and everyone's nervous after Venezuela," he added.

At 1850 GMT, IPE front-month May Brent was up $1.68 at $26.03/bbl.

-By Selina Williams, Dow Jones Newswires; +44 207 842 9262; selina.williams@dowjones.com (Vincent Nwanma in Lagos contributed to this report.)

<a href=www.sun-sentinel.com>Reuters Posted March 24 2003, 2:10 PM EST

CARACAS, Venezuela - A U.S. academic and expert on Venezuelan affairs was found dead under a road overpass in Caracas Monday and police said they were investigating her apparent suicide.

Janet Kelly, 56, who had lived and worked in Venezuela for more than 20 years, was a respected political analyst in the oil-rich country. Her articles appeared regularly in Venezuelan newspapers and her views were often quoted by foreign media covering the political conflict between leftist President Hugo Chavez and his foes.

Kelly's body was found on a road beneath an elevated highway in Caracas' eastern Altamira district Monday, police said. Her car was parked on the highway above and a note was found in her clothes giving her name, Venezuelan identity card number and the telephone numbers of her home and her son.

``It's presumed to be a suicide,'' Police chief inspector Ali Magdaleno Reyes told Reuters.

Philadelphia-born Kelly was a politics professor at Venezuela's IESA business school in Caracas and had recently bought the Spanish-speaking country's only English-language daily newspaper, The Daily Journal.