Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell said on Monday that it has reopened oil facilities accounting for about 39, 200 barrels per day (bpd) of production in Nigeria's troubled oil- rich areas after the week-long siege by local villagers.

"The two flowstations had been reopened to allow for further talks with the villagers," a Shell spokesman told Xinhua, referring to the Agbada 1 and 2 in the southern Nigerian state of Rivers.

Villagers left the Agbada 1 flowstation, which has a capacity to produce 14,200 bpd of oil, on Sunday but then shut down another flowstation, Agbada 2, with a daily output of 25,000 bpd at the same area.

Shell insisted that they cannot negotiate when the facilities were closed and finally the villagers conceded.

The spokesman confirmed that they resumed the talks with the villagers in the southern oil city of Part Harcourt on Monday.

The villagers reportedly were protesting over 938.6 US dollars of compensation offered by Shell for an oil spill on their land in 2003, saying the amount was inhuman and unjust.

Shell is the biggest player in Nigeria's oil sector, accounting for almost half of Africa's top oil producer's daily exports of 2. 5 million barrels.

The shutdown of oil installations in Nigeria's south is common as locals feel alienated from their oil resources and accuse the government and oil companies of neglecting them in infrastructure development.

Source: Xinhua