US oil giant Chevron said Tuesday it had shut a flowstation producing 10,000 barrels per day (bpd) in Nigeria's southern delta, after discovering a breach of a pipeline linking it to an export terminal.

A spokesman for the firm's subsidiary in Nigeria told Xinhua they didn't know whether the pipeline from Makaraba flowstation to the Escravos export terminal had been blown up due to sabotage as reported.

"We can only confirm that we have discovered a breach of the flowline from Makaraba, and that the flowstation has been shut-in pending the outcome of investigations into the cause of the breach and the repair of the line," he said.

"We have shut in about 10,000 bpd production from that location but this does not impact our daily production numbers and export commitment," he added.

The closure comes just two weeks after Makaraba flowstation came back on stream. Makaraba and Chevron's five other flowstations with a total capacity of 140,000 barrels of oil per day were previously closed down in March 2003 in the wake of ethnic violence in the delta.

Nigeria is Africa's top oil producer with a daily output of about 2.5 million barrels, all from the southern delta, where seizures of flowstations, kidnapping of oil workers and threat of violence are very common.

Source: Xinhua