Niger Delta Avengers, a Nigerian militant group has threatened on Wednesday to attack off-shore oil facilities within days, raising fears of a repeat of a 2016 wave of violence that helped push Africa’s biggest economy into recession. The Niger Delta Avengers - the fighters behind many of the 2016 attacks - said they had planned the assaults after giving up on talks to give their impoverished southern region a greater share of the oil revenue it produced.
“This round of attacks will be the most deadly and will be targeting the deep sea operations of the multinationals,” the group said in a statement in its website. It said its targets, in the seas off the swampland delta region, would include the Bonga Platform and the Agbami, EA and Akpo fields. The militants also said it would target the Nigerian oil company Brittania-U.
Spokesperson of the militant group Murdoch Agbinibo in a statement which was published on the group’s website said the round of attacks will be the “most deadly and will be targeting the deep sea operations of the multinationals.”
Calling for the restructuring of Nigeria, the group said their plan to attack oil facilities in the oil-rich region of the country is due to killings and division happening in some parts of the country.
“On the 15th of January 2018, being the 62nd historic Remembrance Day of the 1956 discovery of commercial oil by Shell Darcy in the now forgotten and dejected Oloibiri Community in the Niger Delta; the high command of the ND Avengers summoned a meeting of all our operatives from across the Niger Delta to review the progress of our operations so far and deliberate on the planned actions for the future.
“It was agreed in that meeting that the killings and division presently playing out in Nigeria along divergent grounds makes this the perfect time to restructure this country. Our demand unambiguously is for the government to restructure this Country,” the statement read in part.
Shell operates the Bonga and EA fields while Chevron is the operator of Agbami. Akpo stakeholders include Total, China’s CNOOC, Brazil’s Petrobras and Nigeria’s Sapetro. There was no immediate statement from any of the companies.
Attacks on pipelines and other facilities in the Niger Delta in 2016 cut Nigeria’s crude production from a peak of 2.2 million barrels per day (mbpd) to near 1 mbpd - the lowest level seen in Africa’s top oil producer in at least 30 years.
That, combined with low oil prices, pushed the OPEC member into its first recession in a quarter of a century - crude sales make up two-thirds of government revenue and most of its foreign exchange.
