Oil price rises: Nigerian militants attack & seek peace; Scottish strike; Exxon strike in Nigeria — updated

LAGOS, Nige­ria (AP) — Mil­i­tants said they blew up two more oil pipelines Mon­day in south­ern Nige­ria and called for for­mer Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter and actor George Clooney to help medi­ate an end to the cri­sis. [27th April 2008 updat­ed at bot­tom]

Mil­i­tary police­men patrol the creeks of the Omadi­no com­mu­ni­ty in War­ri South dis­trict of the Niger Delta.

The Move­ment for the Eman­ci­pa­tion of the Niger Delta, or MEND, said in a state­ment that fight­ers hit two pipelines it believes are oper­at­ed by Chevron Corp. and a Roy­al Dutch Shell PLC joint ven­ture in south­ern Rivers state.

Shell offi­cials had no imme­di­ate infor­ma­tion on any attack, and the Niger­ian mil­i­tary bat­tle group that patrols the oil region’s water­ways said it had no reports of overnight vio­lence. Offi­cials from Chevron could not imme­di­ate­ly be reached for com­ment.

The mil­i­tants last week claimed a sep­a­rate attack on a pipeline oper­at­ed by a Shell joint ven­ture that the com­pa­ny said shut down a small amount of oil pro­duc­tion. Video Watch how Nige­ria attacks help hike gas prices »

The mil­i­tants say they are step­ping up their activ­i­ties after the arrest of one of their lead­ers, Hen­ry Okah, who is on tri­al for ter­ror­ism and trea­son.

The mil­i­tants also called for medi­a­tion by Carter with the aim of end­ing the long-run­ning cri­sis that gov­ern­ment-led peace par­leys have so far failed to con­trol. The mil­i­tants have also asked Pres­i­dent Bush and Clooney for their involve­ment, but said they have received no reply.

“MEND expressed its will­ing­ness to embrace a gen­uine and trans­par­ent peace pro­gram with­out get­ting any response. The rip­ple effect of this attack will touch your econ­o­my and peo­ple one way or the oth­er and hope we now have your atten­tion,” it said.

The mil­i­tant group emerged in ear­ly 2006, launch­ing bomb­ing attacks on Nige­ri­a’s oil infra­struc­ture that cut about one quar­ter of the usu­al oil out­put in Africa’s biggest crude pro­duc­er. That has helped send oil prices to all-time highs.

The mil­i­tants want the release of their lead­ers from prison, and for more oil indus­try rev­enue for their areas, which remain deeply poor despite the nat­ur­al boun­ty.

But crime and mil­i­tan­cy are close­ly inter­wo­ven in the south­ern Niger Delta where the crude is pumped. Many of the var­i­ous armed groups in the region have had links to local politi­cians, who helped arm and direct the gun­men in their efforts to rig elec­tions.

Both mil­i­tants and gov­ern­ment offi­cials are sus­pect­ed of heavy involve­ment in the theft and resale of crude oil, which oil indus­try offi­cials brings rev­enues that run into the mil­lions of dol­lars per day.
adver­tise­ment

Nige­ri­a’s vast net­work of oil pipelines criss­cross the swamps and creeks in the Niger Delta and are eas­i­ly sab­o­taged. But the mil­i­tants haven’t recent­ly shown the sophis­ti­cat­ed, mil­i­tary-style raids on staffed oil infra­struc­ture that made them the most potent-ever mil­i­tant group in south­ern Nige­ria.

The mil­i­tants’ activ­i­ties appear to have moved fur­ther into the pro­pa­gan­da realm, with demands on inter­na­tion­al fig­ures linked to exter­nal news events. Carter was in the Mid­dle East on Mon­day.

— from main­stream media source (also below).

—–

Oil prices head­ed toward $117 a bar­rel as oil giant BP pre­pared to shut down a key North Sea pipeline and a strike at Exxon in Nige­ria dis­rupt­ed pro­duc­tion.

BP’s For­ties pipeline, which pro­vides a third of the UK’s dai­ly oil out­put, will close if a two-day strike by refin­ery work­ers goes ahead.

Rebels in Nige­ria also claimed anoth­er attack on a Roy­al Dutch Shell pipeline.

The Move­ment for the Eman­ci­pa­tion of the Niger Delta has repeat­ed­ly tried to sab­o­tage Shel­l’s pro­duc­tion in recent weeks.

A strike by work­ers at Exxon Mobil, Nige­ri­a’s biggest for­eign oil pro­duc­er, has fur­ther dis­rupt­ed pro­duc­tion in the African coun­try. It said it had been forced to halt its out­put of crude oil, esti­mat­ed at 200,000 bar­rels per day.

In the UK, work­ers at the Grange­mouth plant are due to take part in a two-day strike from Sun­day in a row over pen­sions.

The BP-run pipeline from the For­ties oil fields in the North Sea, relies on steam and elec­tric­i­ty from the Ineos refin­ery at Grange­mouth in cen­tral Scot­land.

A BP spokesman said that clos­ing Grange­mouth would cause up to 70 plat­forms in the North Sea to either shut down or reduce pro­duc­tion of oil.

BP said the pipeline would close when the pro­vi­sion of steam and elec­tric­i­ty from Grange­mouth runs out.

The com­pa­ny added that it would keep the pipeline open as long as pos­si­ble, but antic­i­pat­ed shut­ting it late on Sat­ur­day, if strike action goes ahead.

======
Fri Apr, 25 2008

Niger­ian main rebel group, The Move­ment for the Eman­ci­pa­tion of the Niger Delta (MEND), today said it blew up anoth­er oil pipeline belong­ing to Shell in it renewed attack against oil infra­struc­tures in the region.

MEND said the late Thurs­day night attack occurred at Kula Riv­er in Rivers state of Nige­ria.

MEND says it is fight­ing to force the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to direct more oil indus­try rev­enues to the region, which remains deeply poor despite four decades of oil pro­duc­tion in the area.

The mil­i­tant group said mil­i­tary offi­cials who were sup­posed to pro­tect the pipelines actu­al­ly assist­ed the fight­ers when they ran into them dur­ing the attack.

“After the blast, the fight­ers ran into a docked joint mil­i­tary patrol boat but were aston­ished that instead of a con­fronta­tion, the sol­diers in the patrol boat urged them on and lament­ed about hav­ing to defend what is unjust.

“MEND uses this oppor­tu­ni­ty to thank its numer­ous sym­pa­thiz­ers inside the mil­i­tary, oil indus­try and oil pro­duc­ing com­mu­ni­ties for facil­i­tat­ing the suc­cess of the on-going Oper­a­tion Cyclone (the
crip­pling of the entire Niger­ian oil export indus­try).

“This attack is ded­i­cat­ed to the Rivers state gov­er­nor, Mr. Roti­mi Amaechi who boast­ed to the Finan­cial Times that our past suc­cess­es were attrib­uted to the absence of patrol boats under­go­ing ser­vic­ing. We wait­ed for the patrol boats to return back in ser­vice before car­ry­ing
out this attack to proof a point.

“Our can­did advice to the oil majors is that they should not waste their time repair­ing any lines as we will con­tin­ue to sab­o­tage them. We have time on our side and there is so much to be destroyed. The only time we will stop is when we receive a direct order from our Shep­herd.” The
group said in an email sent by Jomo Gbo­mo to The Times of Nige­ria.

Shell con­firmed three attacks over the past week, and announced it may not be able to meet its oblig­a­tions to ship some 169,000 bar­rels per day from Nige­ria over the next few weeks. The com­pa­ny, one of the main oper­a­tors in the coun­try, has yet to report any pro­duc­tion out­ages from
the oth­er attacks.

Those attacks have helped send crude prices to his­toric highs on inter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

The mil­i­tants have stepped up activ­i­ties as one of the group’s reput­ed lead­ers, Hen­ry Okah, faces tri­al on ter­ror­ism and trea­son charges. The group emerged two years ago and quick­ly estab­lished itself as the region’s most effec­tive mil­i­tant orga­ni­za­tion.

Since Okah’s arrest, the group has not launched any of the coor­di­nat­ed, mil­i­tary-style armed raids on staffed facil­i­ties that orig­i­nal­ly made it notable.