PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria (Reuters) - Hundreds of ethnic Ogoni youths attacked and burned a police station near the Nigerian oil city of Port Harcourt on Tuesday after officers shot dead one protester, witnesses said.

The militant youths barricaded the main road to the Port Harcourt refinery and closed businesses as they battled police trying to dislodge them from the area, witnesses said.

It was not immediately clear what sparked the latest youth protest in the oil-rich but improverished Niger delta, which had previously been caused by disputes over community projects, jobs and contracts.

"We understand that the police shot dead one youth and that the youths then went on a rampage and burnt down a police station at Eleme," a spokesman of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People told Reuters.

Police could not confirm the death toll but said they had deployed more men to the area to contain the situation and stop it from spilling over to the city centre.

"The problem is very serious and our concern now is to try and manage it. We have drafted more men, especially riot police to the area," said Rivers state police commissioner Samuel Adetuyi.

Tempers have been high in the eastern delta since September when local warlord Mujahid Dokubo-Asari threatened an "all-out war on the Nigerian state" and to blow up key oil installations after the government attacked his militia strongholds.

Nigeria's biggest oil producer, Royal Dutch Shell, which accounts for about half of the OPEC-members around 2.3 million barrels per day oil output, was forced to abandon its operations in Ogoniland in 1993 after longstanding community protests.