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Militants blow up oil pipeline in Niger Delta


dpa German Press Agency
Published: Saturday December 23, 2006

Abuja- Militants blew up two oil pipelines belonging to the state-run Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation in Ekpan, Warri on Saturday A fire that ensued engulfed the area and was still raging, local reports said. No group had claimed responsibility for the action.

Army Brigadier-General Alfred Ilogho, commander of troops deployed in the area to ensure safety and security of oil facilities, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the fire would soon be put out.

Troops, operating under the code-name "Operation Restore Hope," would comb the area and neighbouring states, particularly Rivers State, to capture the assailants, he said.

Ilogho said a cursory investigation in the affected area raised suspicions that the assailants used dynamite to blow up the facility.

He said he suspected also that the assailants must have been the same group that used dynamite to blow up some cars in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, also in the Niger Delta, earlier in the week.

The militant Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta claimed responsibility for the Port Harcourt bombing of a night club belonging to Anglo-Dutch oil giant, Shell, earlier in the week and that of Italian oil company, Agip's premises.

The security situation in the Niger Delta had been deteroriating since February when militant groups stepped up their use of force and began kidnapping expatriate oil workers to demand a bigger say in the control of oil and gas resources in the area.

Nigeria depends on oil exports from the area for more than 90 per cent of its total annual income. But the country has lost over one- quarter of its daily oil output of 2.1 million barrels since agitations heightened in the Niger Delta.

Militant groups in the region are demanding the release of ethnic Ijaw leaders in detention in Abuja, particularly, those of impeached governor of Bayelsa State, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, and separatist leader Mujahideen Asari-Dokubo.

Alamieyeseigha is standing trial for graft, while Asari-Dokubo is on trial for treason.

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LAGOS: The largest oil operator in Nigeria, Royal Dutch Shell, evacuated expatriate staff dependants from the Niger Delta after militants planted a car bomb in a residential compound, the company said.


The withdrawal began hours after armed militants stormed an oil facility operated by France's Total in the delta's Rivers state, killing three police officers.

Shell's pullout involves about 400 foreign family members from residential compounds in Port Harcourt, Warri and Bonny Island. Staff will stay put and oil and gas production will not be affected, officials said.

"We are not sure if this thing is going to deteriorate. If it deteriorates we will have fewer people to contend with," a senior Shell executive said.

Attacks on oil facilities and kidnappings of workers have become an almost a weekly occurrence in the world's eighth largest oil exporter. But Monday's car bomb attack in the car park of a Shell residential compound in the region's largest city Port Harcourt brought the violence closer to home.

No one was killed or injured, but nine cars were damaged.

Despite the attack on the Total facility, oil production at the 35,000 barrel-a-day Obagi field in Rivers State was unaffected, a company source said.

"This attack was of a bandit, criminal nature. To our great regret there were three police officers killed in the attack," Total spokesman Paul Floren said, adding that security had been reinforced.

Militancy and crime have risen dramatically this year in the vast wetlands region, which is home to all the OPEC member nation's oil and gas resources.

The mounting chaos is rooted in widespread poverty and decades of neglect by the Nigerian government, which has failed to convert the delta's oil wealth into local jobs or development.

Elections

Industry executives had been expecting security to decline before a landmark poll next April, because elections often reignite long-standing power struggles between rival clans and militias in the remote, lawless region.

Italian oil company Agip, a unit of ENI, has already transferred the families of its workers from the delta to Lagos. Militants also detonated a car bomb at the perimeter fence of its Port Harcourt headquarters on Monday.

In February, Shell shut down its entire western delta operations after militant attacks and kidnappings, cutting Nigerian oil output by about a fifth.

Militants fighting for more control over the region's oil wealth are still holding four foreign oil workers, three Italians and one Lebanese, after an attack on an Agip oil export terminal on December 7.

It accused Agip of offering ransoms for the workers on Wednesday and vowed to kill the four men rather than free them for cash.

Criminal attacks against the industry are also common, often sponsored by local community chiefs seeking ransoms or other benefits from Western oil operators.

Unidentified gunmen are holding five Shell workers at a company base after invading the facility on December 14. They argue the company owes the local community almost $1 million.

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JOURNAL: Innovation in Nigeria's OSW
Nigeria's open source guerrillas made some amazing strides in method this week in their war against both oil companies and the entrenched kleptocracy in Lagos (this is part of a-long-running-series-on-Nigeria's-global-guerrillas). It is also yet another example of how this century's Spanish civil war (in that the innovations in warfare that presaged the next global war were demonstrated/perfected there), the war in Iraq, continues to make its influence felt globally. The innovations introduced this week include:
Car bombs. Car bombs were detonated at two oil company (Agip and Shell) compounds in Port Harcourt (a oil hub city in the Niger delta). Non-vehicular IEDs aren't far behind.
Indirect systems disruption. Guerrillas bombed a water pipeline that fed a refinery in southern Nigeria. This method takes advantage of both mutual and input network interdependencies (it is also a variant of a technique that would work extremely well in Saudi Arabia). Read the brief, "Infrastructure Meltdowns" for more on network interdependencies that can be leveraged for systems disruption.
Corporate targeting. By focusing on the employees of oil companies, the guerrillas have scored a win: Royal Dutch Shell has started to evacuate all dependents from Nigeria (the car bombs set this in motion). Read the brief: "Target: Corporate Psychology" for more on how to use attacks on corporate psychology to achieve goals in warfare.

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