| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Africa: Subsaharan | |
| As Tensions Escalate in Nigeria, Chevron Shuts Down Two Flow Stations | |
| 2005-09-23 | |
Militant Group Threatens to Destroy Oil Industry ABUJA, Nigeria, Sept. 23 -- The disruptions in Nigeria's oil production caused by militant separatists escalated Friday as Chevron announced it had shut down a second flow station and Royal Dutch Shell evacuated personnel from two others. The developments came as the militant group, the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, issued a statement threatening to destroy the nation's oil industry--the fifth largest oil exporter to the United States--unless Nigerian authorities freed the group's leader, Moujahid Dokubo-Asari, 40. He was arrested Tuesday on allegations of treason, a capital offense, for calling for the dissolution of Nigeria in a newspaper interview. "We will kill every iota of oil operations in the Niger Delta," said a statement e-mailed to news organizations on Thursday by a group calling itself the Supreme Council of the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force. "We will destroy anything and everything. We will challenge our enemies in our territory and we shall feed them to the vultures." The group's leaders have over the past two days claimed to have taken control of 10 flow stations armed with nothing more than machetes and sticks of dynamite. There are many dozens of flow stations, which direct oil from wells into major pipelines and onward to tankers for export, in the Niger Delta, the impoverished southern region that is home to the nation's oil industry. Nigerian authorities and oil industry officials have portrayed a far-more limited picture of the ongoing disruptions. Edith Azinge, a spokeswoman for U.S.-based Chevron, reported that youths confronted officials at one flow station on Thursday, prompting the company to shut it down. A second flow station, she said, was shut down late Thursday because of reports that it would be targeted next. There were no injuries and the youths are not currently occupying either facility, Azinge said. Together, the two flow stations produced 27,000 barrels of oil each day. Overall, Nigerian oil wells produce 2.4 million barrels of oil per day. "It's not too much of a problem," said Azinge by phone from Lagos. She said there was no schedule for resuming operations at the two stations. Royal Dutch Shell, which produces nearly half of Nigeria's oil exports, announced Friday it was evacuating non-essential staff from two flow stations, but automated operations were continuing without any immediate interruption in production. Violence and brinkmanship have long surrounded Nigeria's oil industry, which produces billions of dollars for the national government and foreign investors each year while providing little, say residents of the Niger Delta, for the community itself. Lucrative wells and flow stations dot the sprawling delta, pumping oil from beneath villages that lack even the basics of clean water or a functioning, modern economy. Dokubo-Asari has long advocated secession of the Niger Delta, and it is not clear why a quote in a newspaper interview prompted his arrest Tuesday. He was quoted in the article as saying, "Nigeria is an evil entity. It has nothing to stand on, and I will continue to fight and try to see that Nigeria dissolves and disintegrates." | |
| Posted by:lotp |
| #1 True, this is a "little-recognized front." I recall hearing of celebration demonstrations there after 9-11. But the conflict in the delta isn't Muslims vs X (for a change), but a more ordinary "where's mine?" The corrupt government didn't distribute oil largesse around very far, it seems. |
| Posted by: James 2005-09-23 18:40 |