Nigeria rattled by more attacks on oil industry as Chevron well hit

AP/Fuel Fix:
Nigerian oil militants said they blew up another Chevron oil well Wednesday in a rejection of the government’s offer of peace talks.

The bombing comes a day after the government ordered the military to halt attacks in the oil-producing south and urged the militants to halt the bombings to allow a dialogue. But the Niger Delta Avengers said they will not negotiate.

It’s the fourth attack in as many weeks on a facility of U.S.-based oil company Chevron, which last month was forced to halt operations at its 160,000-barrel a day Escravos export terminal. The Avengers also have blown up installations of Dutch-British Shell and Italy’s Agip, halving Nigeria’s production to about 1.2 million barrels a day.

The recent assaults ended years of relative peace in the delta and have lost Nigeria its place as Africa’s biggest oil producer to Angola.
...
The militants have told all international oil companies to leave the oil-producing Niger Delta and say they want a greater share of Nigeria’s oil wealth for local communities. Oil provides 80 percent of government revenue, while pollution from production has destroyed farmlands and fishing grounds.
...
It is not clear who they expect would take the place of the international companies and to whom they would sell any oil they produced.  There are plenty of alternative sources for oil in the market right now and by restricting supply from Nigeria they are actually boosting the price the alternative sources can collect.  Chevron does not have this problem with its wells in the Permian Basin of Texas.

Nigeria is notoriously corrupt and the militants may be just trying to deny funds to those who profit from the sell within the Nigerian government in hopes of getting more concessions.  However, the concessions they have received so far have not satisfied them.

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