Around 100 troops backed by gunboats and helicopters flattened the makeshift refineries in the Mbiama area located in a key oil-producing state of Bayelsa, a spokesman said.

"There were over 500 illegal refineries within the area the size of eight football fields," Timothy Antigha said in a phone interview on Sunday.

The military cordoned off the area and set it ablaze. No casualties were reported and no arrests made in what Antigha said was one of the largest raid ever conducted in Bayelsa state.

"I believe we destroyed several hundreds of thousands of litres of petroleum products," he said.

The "exercise is going to continue as often as possible, so that they would not have freedom of action to continue these illegal activities," said Jarafu Ibrahim, commander of the battalion that razed the refineries, many of which are not more than 40-square-metres each.

Oil theft, known locally as "bunkering" has been reponsible for the majority of oil spills in Nigeria, according to reports.

Royal-Dutch group Shell, the oldest operator in Nigeria says 98 percent of oil spilled in the vast wetlands in 2009 was due to vandalism of its pipelines or theft.

Nigeria is one of the world's largest oil producers, but the Niger Delta region remains deeply impoverished and badly polluted.

Militants claiming to be fighting for a fairer distribution of oil revenue and criminal gangs have carried out scores of attacks and some were also suspected to have been involved in other crimes including theft of crude.

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