The Niger Delta Avengers militant group claimed three new attacks on the country’s battered oil infrastructure overnight, promising to bring Nigeria’s oil production to “zero.”
Early on Friday, the group said via its Twitter account that it had blown up a pipeline in Nigeria’s Bayelsa state owned by Italy’s ENI, hours after attacks on another ENI pipeline as well as one belonging to Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd (SPDC).
“At about 3:30am our (@NDAvengers) strike team blew up the Brass to Tebidaba Crude oil line in Bayelsa,” the group said on a Twitter feed it uses to claim attacks.
The pipeline is used to transport Brass River crude, which was placed under force majeure after an attack last month, to an export terminal.
Hours earlier, the group said it blew up the Ogboinbiri-Tebidaba and Clough Creek-Tebidaba pipelines in Bayelsa and a Shell Forcados export pipeline. That grade has been under force majeure since an attack on a sub-sea pipeline in February.
Because the attacks were on infrastructure for oil streams already under force majeure, the immediate impact on Nigeria’s exports was limited. The country’s oil minister said on Thursday its production was close to 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd).
ENI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the SPDC, which operates the Forcados line, said the company was “investigating reports of an attack on its pipeline in the Western Niger Delta.”
The Militants had earlier attacked a boat belonging to Nigeria’s state oil firm NNPC in the Niger Delta, killing at least six people, the army said on Thursday.
“During the deliberate attack two soldiers were killed, one wounded, one soldier missing while four civilian staff attached to the house boat were shot dead,” the army said in a statement.
The attack took place on Wednesday in the Warri area, where militants have staged a series of attacks on oil pipelines in recent weeks.
