Pipeline attack hits Nigeria’s crude production
Attacks on an oil pipeline cost Nigeria another 50,000 barrels a day of production, threatening a further rise in global crude prices.
The explosion, which damaged a pipe owned by a subsidiary of Eni, an Italian firm, came a day after militants in speedboats attacked a Nigerian navy vessel, killing five people.
Violence in the Niger Delta, where most of Nigeria’s 36 billion barrels of proven oil reserves are found, has cut the country’s daily crude output which should total 2.5 million barrels by at least 25 per cent.
In the last week, gunmen have killed a soldier and kidnapped two German construction workers by using dynamite to blow their armoured car off the road. The largest militant group, styling itself the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), has ended a ceasefire.
Another group threatened to “behead” any outsiders found in the town of Bonny, the site of a crucial oil export terminal. Foreign staff working for major oil firms were “specifically mentioned” in hate leaflets and thousands of people are now believed to have fled Bonny.
Oil revenues provide Nigeria’s government with more than 80 per cent of its revenue but very little benefits the Delta’s people. The armed groups say they are fighting for a fairer share of the oil money. But many have become criminal gangs.
Gordon Brown promised President Umaru Yar’Adua of Nigeria in a meeting at Downing Street yesterday that Britain would send military advisers to help the country’s security forces.
But the leading militant group said that the offer was “tainted with greed” and would be resisted.
“We plan to embarrass the governments of Nigeria and the UK and frustrate this military alliance the way the Americans are being frustrated in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Jomo Gbomo, a spokesman for Mend.
