Again, militants hit Forcados pipeline

Niger Delta militants have bombed Trans Forcados oil pipeline located in Warri, Delta state only two days after it came back on stream.

This latest attack comes just hours after President Muhammadu Buhari held talks with leaders in the region where they presented a laundry list of demands including allocation of more oil blocks to people from the region.

Residents of Batan community where the affected pipeline is located say the attack caused massive spill, flooding a creek knee-deep in crude.

While no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, it however raises a cloud of uncertainity over talks to enforce a ceasefire that …

“This shows that little or no progress has been made,” said Luke Doogan, energy analyst at West Sands Advisory Limited.

Peace talks had raised hopes that with 300,000 barrels per day capacity coming back on stream, Federal allocations for December will rise by N180billion and power supply will increase by 2,000megawatts.

Shell had on February declared force majeure on Forcados liftings, following the disruption in production caused by the spill on the Forcados Terminal subsea crude oil export pipeline.

The pipeline carries crude and gas to the 400,000-barrel-a-day Forcados export terminal owned by Dutch-British multinational Shell.

That brief resumption allowed the petroleum ministry to announce Tuesday that production had increased to 2.1 million barrels a day – the highest since attacks began in February that at one point reduced production by a million barrels a day, throwing Africa’s biggest economy into recession.