Nigeria rebels declare ‘oil war’

15/09/2008
Nige­ri­a’s main mil­i­tant group in the Niger Delta has declared an “oil war” against forgeign-owned oil com­pa­nies work­ing in the region.

The Move­ment for the Eman­ci­pa­tion of the Niger Delta (Mend) said on Sun­day it had launched “hur­ri­cane Bar­barossa” and destroyed flow sta­tions and oil pipelines, killing 22 Niger­ian sol­diers.

Mend said it was launch­ing the “war” after gov­ern­ment troops attacked one of its posi­tions a day ear­li­er with aer­i­al and marine forces.

Chevron con­firmed one of its oil plat­forms was attacked by rebels on Sun­day.

“There was an attack on a plat­form already shut down due to pipeline prob­lems,” an offi­cial said.

“There were heavy casu­al­ties on the part of the mil­i­tants,” Lieu­tenant-Colonel Sagir Musa, a mil­i­tary spokesman for the task force in Rivers state, said.

“We are hope­ful they will give up the fight very soon.”

‘Hur­ri­cane of retal­i­a­tion’

He said no oil facil­i­ties were affect­ed by two days of heavy fight­ing.

Vio­lence in the Niger Delta, the cen­tre of the Opec mem­ber’s oil sec­tor, has halt­ed a fifth of the coun­try’s oil pro­duc­tion since 2006.

The Niger Delta accounts for most of Nige­ri­a’s oil out­put of two mil­lion bar­rels per day, mak­ing it the world’s eighth biggest oil exporter.

Dr Muhammed Ali Zainy, a senior ana­lyst for the cen­tre for Glob­al Ener­gy stud­ies, told Al Jazeera: “Recent­ly Opec reduced pro­duc­tion by about 520,000 bar­rels per day but this did not stop the slid­ing price of oil.

“This means that the demand for oil is fal­ter­ing and that the world econ­o­my is weak, there­fore any dent in Niger­ian oil pro­duc­tion would not have a big impact on the mar­ket,” he said.

Mend mem­bers warned oil firms in the Niger Delta on Sat­ur­day to with­draw their work­ers in the next 24 hours or face a “hur­ri­cane” of retal­i­a­tion fol­low­ing a major gun bat­tle with secu­ri­ty forces ear­li­er in the day.

Mend said secu­ri­ty forces used heli­copters, jet fight­ers and more than 20 gun­boats in Sat­ur­day’s fight­ing.

A secu­ri­ty source said sol­diers from the army, navy and air force were involved in the clash­es.

Inse­cu­ri­ty in the region has cut the West African coun­try’s out­put by around a fifth since ear­ly 2006, when Mend began blow­ing up oil pipelines and kid­nap­ping for­eign work­ers, help­ing push up world oil prices.

Roy­al Dutch Shell, Exxon­Mo­bil, Total, Eni, and Chevron, are among the numer­ous oil com­pa­nies oper­at­ing in the Niger Delta.