We ’ll shock the world soon, say Avengers as militants hit oil facility again

 

The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) has destroyed a pipeline belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) close to the Batan community, Warri South-West Local Government Area of Delta State in its latest assault on the economy.

 It threatened  to carry out a bigger   attack that  ”will shock the whole world,” and  said it had no interest in dialoguing with government.

The group in a  tweet after the Thursday night attack said: “At 11:45pm on Thursday, @NDAvengers blew up other #NNPC gas and crude trunkline close to Warri. Pipeline that was heavily guarded by military.”

 In another tweet,it said:”The Niger Delta Stakeholders’ meeting is an insult to the people of the Niger Delta. What we need is a sovereign state, not pipeline contracts. To IOCs, indigenous oil companies and the Nigerian military:  watch out, something big is about to happen, and it will shock the whole world.”

Two stakeholders in the area, an environmental activist, Comrade Sheriff Mulade, and the spokesperson of the Ijaw Youths Congress (IYC), Eric Omare, confirmed the development.

“There was an explosion about 11:15pm, but we have not been able to ascertain the exact point. It was around this area. We have two pieces of information. One says it was around Bennet Island, the other says it was Batan. We need to be very concrete with our information”, Mulade said.

But Omare said: “It was at the back of Batan, Warri South-West. I think the facility should belong to the NNPC”.

Although there was no official security confirmation of the incident, as none of the top security operatives who could make comments on it were unavailable, a reliable senior naval officer confirmed that an explosion had been recorded close to the Egwa 1 area which is the oil field the Batan community belongs to.

The insurgent group, which has in recent times cost Nigeria’s crude oil output and gas production huge losses, yesterday threatened more devious actions and rejected dialogue in tweeted message.

The Batan attack came on the heels of Thursday’s attack by the group on Chevron’s Abiteye line in the Warri South West Local Government Area ,Delta State which has grounded the multinational company’s entire swamp operations in the state. .

Claiming responsibility for that attack, the NDA tweeted: “We warned Chevron,but they didn’t listen.@NDAvengers just blew up the Escravos tank farm main electricity feed pipeline”.

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr.Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, said on Thursday that the amnesty programme for former militants, signed in 2009 to end a previous insurgency, needed to improve.

A committee set up by the  Delta State leaders warned on Thursday that a military approach would not work and saw “an apparent consensus that the federal government and oil companies have neglected the grievances of local communities”.

Nigeria is now producing less than 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), less than Angola and well below the 2.2 million bpd assumed in the 2016 state budget.