Aggrieved residents of Koroama community in Yenegoa, Bayelsa state have shut down Shell Petroleum Development Company’s Gbarain-Ubie Integrated Gas Plant which is located in the community.

The protesting youths, women and elders carried out the action to press home demands for electricity supply from the power plant component of the facility, blocking the access road to the facility and forcing work at the gas plant to be suspended.

The Paramount Ruler of Koroama in Yenagoa Local Government Area, Chief Sabu Martins, who addressed the aggrieved members of his community, urged them to remain resolute until their objectives were realised.

The monarch lamented that the community though endowed with oil and gas, had suffered the adverse impact of gas flaring and deserved constant supply of electricity generated with gas from the area to ameliorate the residents’ sufferings.

He noted that that the protest had been going on for the past three weeks and had forced the contractors to vacate the community until the oil firm gave a commitment to provide electricity to the community.

Also addressing the protesters, Miss Ankio Briggs, a community rights activist, noted that the demands of the people hosting Shell’s gas plant was modest.

The spokesperson for Shell, Joseph Obari, said that the oil firm had difficulties meeting the demands of electricity supply from its gas plant to the host communities due to limited capacity.