In last month's attacks, heavily-armed fighters bombed several oil pipelines, sabotaged production platforms and crippled one of the main tanker loading platforms, all located on the western side of the vast wetlands region.
The group has vowed another large-scale attack on oil facilities in another area of the delta, and repeated the threat on Wednesday, advising foreign workers to leave.
``We will attack the most heavily fortified installations so the Nigerian government cannot claim to have been caught unawares,'' they said.
Royal Dutch Shell has evacuated its staff from the entire western delta, cutting 455,000 barrels per day (bpd) of its own output and 100,000 bpd pumped by other companies.
Western multinationals in the eastern delta, including ExxonMobil, ENI unit Agip, Chevron and Total are on a heightened state of alert.
And from the Atlantic (via Gristmill):
With an ethnically and religiously combustible population of 130 million, Nigeria is lurching toward disaster, and the stakes are high -- for both Nigeria and the United States. An OPEC member since 1971, Nigeria has 35.9 billion barrels of proven petroleum reserves -- the largest of any African country and the eighth largest on earth. It exports some 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, and the government plans to nearly double that amount by 2010. Nigeria is the fifth-largest supplier of oil to the United States; U.S. energy officials predict that within ten years it and the Gulf of Guinea region will provide a quarter of America's crude.
It is hardly surprising, then, that since 9/11 the Bush administration has courted Nigeria as an alternative to volatile petro-states in the Middle East and Latin America. In 2002, the White House declared the oil of Africa (five other countries on the continent are also key producers) a "strategic national interest" -- meaning that the United States would use military force, if necessary, to protect it. In short, Nigeria's troubles could become America's and, like those of the Persian Gulf, cost us dearly in blood and money.
...
[Nigerian president Olusegun] Obasanjohas has shown scant appetite for tackling the crime, neglect, and inefficiency rampant in the oil sector. "Bunkering" -- tapping into pipelines and siphoning oil into makeshift tankers hidden in the swamps of the Niger River Delta -- is widespread; it is responsible for the loss of some 200,000 barrels a day and for catastrophic fires that have incinerated locals attempting to scoop up the runoff. Criminal gangs with government connections are said to be behind the practice -- who else could hire the needed equipment?
During his first term, Obasanjo established a development commission to distribute oil revenues among the country's indigenous peoples, but its efforts have come to naught; most of the windfall oil profits of the last few years have gone toward refurbishing mansions for the elite. Oil spills and gas flares blight the delta, ruining farmland and poisoning fishing grounds. Owing to the abysmal state of its few refineries, Nigeria remains an importer of gasoline. Officials divert gas from the pumps and sell it on the black market. Fuel shortages are endemic.
7 comments:
I'm surprised there are no claims that these are "Islamic militants"...
Nigeria has had a long line of oppressive governments since its independence. This is the continuation of a long struggle for the Nigerian people. It has been mostly peaceful (on the part of the people in the Niger Delta) until recently. The government's repression and the oil industry's ambivilance made armed struggle an inevitablility.
Here is another example of why we should convert to industrial grade hemp as a primary fuel source. Oil gets too many people killed.
"Here is another example of why we should convert to industrial grade hemp as a primary fuel source."
Works for me.
Nadir: Islamic KKKers are indeed at work in Nigeria, murderously imposing their retarded rules, most famously in sentancing a adultress (via rape by her ex-husband) to death by stoning. The monster who leads the Ijaw fighters in the oil fight is a strict muslim, though I can't tell the extent of this retardation with regards to its extent within his ranks and how they may enforce it on the populace. Other organized militias fight as rivals for control of the oil fields, all claiming intentions to transform the oil wealth into increased prosperity for the population of the oil region. There is no reason to believe that any of these groups are anything but "oil theives", as many locals regard them, or that victory for any of them would produce organized civil self-rule governed by documented and observed personal liberties (ie, "democracy"). These groups all have fierce ethnic identifications and qualifications, and regard those who fail to qualify as members of their ethnicity as enemies according to un-settled historic grievences. There is a strong inter-black racial/racist component to their rheteric, and people who lack approved ethnic status are fleeing the oil area. Other groups are small, independant gangs who (like the larger organized militias) practice oil siphoning, kidnapping-for-ransom, and "for the people" banner-waving.
It appears that govt officials allign with these various groups, which pay for their support. Elections there are marked by massive ballot-stuffing and armed interventions.
The government is extensively currupt and brutal, divided between islamic retards and old-fashioned cash-stuffing stooges. This lack of freedom, ethics, and organization of course means no free enterprise and thus no prosperity; poverty is rampant, and the best chance for achieving prosperity is immigration to the US or other nations where free enterprise flourishes.
In short, a wonderful place for the Ashante family to seek refuge from the horrors of life in the US. Depending on where they move, the little prodigy daughter will have to get her clitorous amputated, and faces death-by-stoning if she has sex outside marriage, even if by rape. Her anti-honkey lectures will go over very well in these regions, however. I wish them well!
Tom: Do you think that any agri-product can provide a viable fuel for combustion?
All: Don't we all support total drug legalization, which would -- among many solved problems -- open us to the wonders of the hemp plant? This action would provide an immediate benefit to the people of Afghanstan and Bush's efforts there.
Legalization of drugs and of hemp would reinvigorate the agricultural industry all over the world. Columbia's gross domestic revenue would skyrocket as would African countries like Ghana which has a rich trade in marijuana.
Countries like The Netherlands are already investigating the cultivation of industrial grade hemp with great success.
The possibilities are endless AND sustainable.
(Nadir: The country is spelled "Colombia")
Tom: Don't you claim that no agri-product can work as a commmercial combustion fuel?
Nadir: I can think of no govt action that would so improve the lives of so many humans on earth than the legalizing of recreational drugs. I very much doubt that you could cite any benefit that I would not agree with. The prohibition of these drugs is one of the greatest banes on humanity.
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