President Muhammadu Buhari has issued a fresh directive to the military to quash the Niger Delta Avengers who have been blowing up pipelines in the oil rich region with glee.
Niger Delta militants on Wednesday blew up Chevron’s Okan offshore production platform. The oil company said it had lost about 105,000 barrels of oil production in three days.
This is coming on the heels of the blowing up of Forcados and Escravos pipelines; which adversely affected Nigeria’s electricity output.
The oil company also said the incident had affected about 35,000 barrels per day of its own net crude production, or about 15 per cent of its output in the country.
“Approximately 35,000 bpd of Chevron’s net crude oil production in Nigeria are impacted,” AFP quoted a Chevron’s spokeswoman, Isabel Ordonez, as saying in a statement.
The General Manager, Policy, Government and Public Affairs, Chevron Nigeria Limited, Mr. Deji Haastrup, confirmed the figure.
He said, “This is a very difficult time for the country because it needs the revenue it can get from oil production. Incidents such as this have the potential to impact that. We do hope that it does not seriously affect the country.”
An anonymous presidential aide told punch newspaper that following the attacks, which has the potential of adversely affecting the revenue of the country, the President instructed the Nigerian Army, the Nigerian Navy and the Nigerian Air Force to stop the activities of the new group.
“The President gave special instruction to the military, especially to the Chief of Naval Staff, that this ugly development of vandals in the Niger Delta should end immediately.”
Workers on the pipelines told the newspaper that before the attack, they had pumped 28,000 barrels from the Escravos terminal on Thursday.
“Both Warri and Kaduna refineries also got a delivery rate of 903,000 barrels just before the attacks,” the workers who spoke on condition of anonymity said.
The workers said following the attacks, they counted about 10 military air patrols over the pipelines on Saturday.
They also added that it had been difficult for fire fighters to quench the fire from the bombed pipelines.
“The fire is still on and it’s going to be hard to stop it because it’s huge,” the workers said on Saturday night.
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