Another militant group in the Niger Delta has vowed to break its truce against the Abuja government and restart attacks on oil and gas infrastructure in the area, according to a report by Vanguard on Friday.
A spokesperson from the Niger Delta Revolutionary Crusaders ordered workers on floating production storage and offloading facilities on or near Agbami, Akpo, Usan, Erna, Abo, Yoho, Unity and Benga to evacuate the area. Other platforms operated by Chevron, Total, Mobil, Shell and Agip are also under threat, the note said, adding that the workers' safety "can no longer be guaranteed by the gods of the rivers and land."
Another group, The Niger Delta Avengers, announced its plan to rescind its participation in the ceasefire last week, with the following threatening statement:
"Our next line of operation will not be like the 2016 campaign which we operated successfully without any casualties; this outing will be brutish, brutal and bloody, as we are shall crush everything we meet on our path to completely put off the fires that burn to flair gas in our communities and cut every pipe that moves crude away from our region. We can assure you that every oil installation in our region will feel warmth of the wrath of the Niger Delta Avengers."
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Last year, the NDA had carried out most of the attacks on oil infrastructure in the Niger Delta, which had crippled Nigeria's oil production to the point that it won an exemption from OPEC's production cut pact.
Since the start of this year and a ceasefire announced by several militant groups, the restive region has been relatively calm. Nigeria's oil production started to gradually increase-to the point of boosting OPEC's overall oil production and capping oil prices-together with production gains in fellow exempt OPEC producer Libya, as well as with U.S. shale's resurgence.
By Zainab Calcuttawala for Oilprice.com
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Zainab Calcuttawala is an American journalist based in Morocco. She completed her undergraduate coursework at the University of Texas at Austin (Hook’em) and reports on… More
Comments
Just a few hours after NDA's announcement last week, on Nov 4th, a suspicious vessel was spotted by the radar just 3 miles away from the vessel I work at in USAN field. We've tried contacting, no response. A security boat nearby was sent to check. After spotting the security vessel this security boat started sailing away at approximately 20 knots according to our radar.
Please understand the reasons why I'm revealing this anonymously.