Just a day after the notorious Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) halted hostilities against oil facilities, a new militant group said on Tuesday that it had attacked a pipeline in the region operated by the state-run Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC).
The Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate -- a group which became known after targeting an oil installation earlier this month -- said that it attacked the Ogor-Oteri pipeline, which is operated NPDC and Nigerian energy company Shoreline.
Until now, the NDA had claimed responsibility for most of the attacks on oil infrastructure in the Delta region, attacks which have dragged Nigeria's oil production down by some 700,000 barrels per day to 1.56 million bpd.
Now the new group rises to notoriety with a well-timed attack when others have finally agreed to talk ceasefire.
The Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate said it remains determined to seek "justice for the people", and criticized other militant groups for seeking talks with the government only to "harass the Nigerian state and the oil multinationals into parting with money".
Earlier this month, the NDA agreed to a conditional ceasefire after prolonged negotiations with the federal government of Nigeria, which offered a glimmer of hope for Nigeria's battered economy.
The condition that the NDA laid out for the federal government is that it stops "harassing innocent citizens," especially members of the Ijaw community in the Delta, from whence many militants hail.
Observes, however, were skeptical about the success of a ceasefire. The NDA is just one of the militant groups operating in the Niger Delta, and a ceasefire with only the NDA does not guarantee a complete cessation of attacks. In addition, the NDA has been less active in recent months, while other self-proclaimed defendants of the local communities have come to the foreground with attacks on pipelines.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More