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Militants attack Chevron oil facility in Niger Delta

By Tonye Bakare with Agency Report
26 May 2016   |   1:14 pm
A militant group has attacked a Chevron installation in the Niger delta, a maritime expert confirmed Thursday.

chevron

A Chevron oil installation in the Niger Delta was blown on Thursday morning in attack already claimed by the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA).

The Thursday attack was the latest damage to Nigeria’s oil infrastructure that is dragging output to 20-year lows.

NDA appeared to claim the attack late Wednesday in a statement on a Twitter account bearing its name that said it had blown up the main electricity feed pipeline at the Escravos oil terminal.

The twitter account leads to a website which contains posts on the activities of the group. The posts were signed by one Col. Mudoch Agbinibo.

In a message posted on the site on May 5, the group had threatened to attack oil installations belonging to international oil firms if its demands were not met.

“If the International oil companies and federal government of Nigeria thinks the Niger Delta Avengers are criminal as they claim and fails to meet our demands. The Niger Delta Avengers are going to activate its elite unit THE NIGER DELTA AIR FORCE code name strike team 1. The International Oil Companies will be our first target, all oil facilities including their offshore platforms eg Bonga Fpso, EA field and their tank farms such as Bonny tank farm, Escravos tank farm and Forcados tank farm.”

The NDA, the most high-profile group to emerge recently in the increasingly volatile Niger Delta, has launched a series of attacks in recent months that have choked output from oil giants Chevron, Shell and ENI and helped push up global crude prices.

The attack would “reduce Chevron’s capability to export crude oil via Escravos,” Dirk Steffen, from the Denmark-based Risk Intelligence firm, told AFP.

“The main threat posed by this development is the severely reduced oil output, which puts further pressure on the financially constrained … government,” Steffen added.

Chevron declined to comment on the attack.

Earlier this month, NDA claimed another attack on Chevron, saying they had damaged a valve platform and later warning the company not to fix the broken infrastructure.

The NDA also claimed responsibility for attacking Shell’s Forcados underwater pipeline in February, while earlier this week Eni declared a force majeure following an attack on its Brass Rivers terminal.

“These incidents have raised fears of a renewed insurgency in the southern region,” PGI Intelligence, a London-based security analysis company, said in a May 24 report.

“Pipeline attacks are likely to continue at their current frequency in at least the short to medium term, and the security situation could deteriorate further if a government crackdown on suspected militants provokes a broader backlash.”

Nigerian junior oil minister Emmanuel Kachikwu recently said oil production had fallen from 2.2 million barrels per day to 1.4 million barrels per day — the lowest level since the 1990s.

President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed to restore stability to Nigeria’s south, whose oil exports account for 70 percent of government revenue.

However, there are fears a heavy-handed response will drive others to join the militants, who are demanding a greater share of oil wealth for the impoverished region.

8 Comments

  • Author’s gravatar

    FG, please crack down NOW . No security situation will deteriorate further than other currently has. The Chevron attackers obviously have inside information guiding them so some investigative work should reveal the sponsors. This is the time to blow things up retaliatory -Gbaramantu is a good start.

    • Author’s gravatar

      When all the Oil companies have all their offices headquartered in Yoruba land and 98 percent of their workers are Yoruba and Fulanis. Who expect you to sing other song if not kill all the Ijaw, kill all the Igbo, kill all the Niger Delta, like your brother Benjamin Adekunle did, so that Oil will be flowing for you.

    • Author’s gravatar

      You are calling on your zoo FG that is broke to help you, fool! Keep calling. Responsible zoo military have realized that the zoo is not worth fighting for, they no longer take orders from illiterate buhari who is busy planning to next foreign trip while you languish in darkness calling on him. wake-up.

    • Author’s gravatar

      May thunder fire you. Oil is your papa commodity. Ole Yorobas, they wan come reap where they did not sow. If the oil was in Yorobaland, no other individual from Niger Delta or SE will smell being a Kerosene distributor, not to talk of owning Oil blocks. Today is the expiration date given by the NDA to all oil block owners. Lets wait and see, if this does not generate into a full blown war.

    • Author’s gravatar

      Dat is not d solution. Dis people ar not criminals. They ar fighting for something. U can’t depennd on d oil they hav and den leave dem miserable. Dia farm lands ar in a mess. Fg shouldswallow dia pride call for negotiation settle dis pple and also invest massively in infrastructure and development in dat area. Dat will restore peace. If government retaliate with war. Dis pple have suffered enough and don’t mind fighting for dia right Thhey believe in.

    • Author’s gravatar

      The oil money stolen to feed you have turned you to an imbecile.

  • Author’s gravatar

    Good job Avengers, keep it up! Thank you for helping to push global oil prices to over $50 today, while ensuring declining production from Nigeria; the leading world oil suppliers (y’know, those that really matters) & my overseas retirement portfolio appreciates you! To ensure that oil prices continue to go up, pleeeease quickly unleash your ‘Air Force-1 tactical strike force’ to blow up all remaining vestiges of economic infrastructure in your homeland. While at it & for maximum shock effect, you may want to also blow up the roads, schools, and hospitals too! Some say that as Nigeria’s national revenue declines, the revenue that goes to your states and local governments also decline (not to talk about that extra 13% that only goes to oil-producing states). But I told them, who cares as long as the ‘Avengers’ cause’ is just? So blow Avengers, blow!

  • Author’s gravatar

    The game of political chess begins! Buhari has violated all agreements signed with jonathan began a massive political witch-hunt arresting jonathan’s cousin and men who worked with him, a man without honour is a man who can’t keep his words, now he has stirred the honests nests in his mad desire for vendetta, and has set himself up for humiliation!