By Dino Mahtani in Lagos and Carola Hoyos in London
Nigeria’s security forces are on high alert after a spate of seemingly politically motivated attacks by armed militants on oil facilities operated by Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch energy group, in the turbulent Niger Delta region.
Nigeria’s
security forces are on high alert after a spate of seemingly politically
motivated attacks by armed militants on oil facilities operated by Royal
Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch energy group, in the turbulent Niger Delta
region.Shell, which produces slightly less than half of the crude oil pumped from the world’s eighth largest producer, has evacuated about 330 staff from four oil flow stations after militants attacked a flow station on Sunday, killing soldiers and damaging the plant. Shell has said it has no plans to pull out of the Niger Delta, where most of Nigeria’s oil is produced, but industry officials admit in private that contingency plans are being made in case of further attacks.
The four stations were shut after a similar attack on an important crude oil pipeline last week that coincided with the kidnapping of four expatriate oil contractors, including an American and a Briton.
Shell has cut roughly one-tenth of Nigeria’s 2.6m barrels a day of production since last week’s attacks.
Oil futures prices in London rose on Monday as a result. The drop in supplies has forced traders look for alternative cargos from other African suppliers of the Middle East. Nigeria’s unrest compounds supply fears caused by a second member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the cartel that controls 40 per cent of the world’s supply.
The west’s stand-off with Iran, the world’s third largest oil exporter, has rattled the market, which worries that supplies could eventually be reduced because of sanctions, air strikes, or Iran’s use of oil as a political weapon.
The New York Mercantile Exchange, the main US energy futures market, was closed yesterday because of a public holiday. But speculators are betting on higher prices, the most recent data from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission indicate. On Friday the agency reported that for the week ended January 10, crude oil speculators had slashed their net short positions, from 14,403 to 722 – the lowest level in four months.
Apart from Iraq, Venezuela and Nigeria have tended to be Opec’s most unreliable suppliers. A group calling itself the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), hitherto unknown, has claimed responsibility for the kidnappings and attacks, saying it is “capable and determined to destroy the ability of Nigeria to export oil”.
Although attacks on oil facilities and hostage-taking are common in the Niger Delta, industry officials and other experts agree the latest incidents indicate a serious security crisis.
Normally, oil companies make a quick cash settlement to kidnappers, but in this case the hostages have been in captivity for almost a week. “These people have a clear political agenda. It is clear that kidnapping for money is not their agenda,” said Dimieari Von Kemedi, a Niger Delta peace and security strategist.
The group has called for the release of a local militia leader who had been arrested for calling for the break up of the Nigerian state, and whose troops fought the Nigerian military from his jungle hideaway in the delta in 2004.
It has also demanded the release of a Nigerian state governor who had called for more oil revenues to be distributed to oil producing states, but who was subsequently impeached and arrested on charges relating to money laundering.
The governor was an important figure in one of the two main factions of Nigeria’s ruling party that in 2003 overwhelmingly won elections seen by western election monitors as marred by violence and rigging.
The men have not been close allies in the past, but have become a focal point around whom many of the delta’s majority tribe, the Ijaw, have pegged their political aspirations; they believe government and oil companies have cheated their people out of local oil wealth.
Analysts say the political overtones of MEND reflect a heightening of tension throughout Nigeria, as it heads towards national elections in 2007, when President Olusegun Obasanjo will be constitutionally required to step down after two terms in office.
During the run up to elections in 2003, oil companies shut down some 40 percent of Nigeria’s crude output in response to Ijaw militancy. Thousands of soldiers were deployed to the delta.
