LAGOS, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Nigeria's oil production capacity has been cut to 631,000 barrels per day (bpd), or some 25 percent of the country's total output, following attacks on a major pipeline belonging to Italy oil giant Agip.

    An Agip spokesman in Lagos told Xinhua on Monday that the Tebidaba-Brass pipeline in the southern oil-rich Niger Delta was blown up with dynamite on Friday night. "We are losing about 65,000 bpd, but we don't know who attacked it," the spokesman said by phone.

    Nigeria is Africa's top oil producer and the world's eighth biggest oil exporter. Ethnic Ijaw militants led by a group called the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) have staged a series of attacks on oil facilities and abducted 13 foreign oil workers in the delta in the past four months.

    Ten of the oil hostages were later released but three Westerners, two Americans and one Briton, were still being held.

    Royal Dutch Shell, the largest oil company operating in Nigeria,and other oil firms, have been forced to shut in about 556,000 bpd before the Agip incident.

    MEND is insisting on the demilitarization of the delta as a condition for the release and the ceasefire. It also vows not to compromise on its demands for the release of two ethnic Ijaw leaders, payment of 1.5-billion-U.S. dollar compensation to Ijaw communities affected by Shell spillages. Enditem