Nigerian rebels attack Shell pipelines

Nigerian rebels have attacked two major pipelines belonging to the energy giant Shell in the latest assault on the country's oil industry. World oil prices rose after the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said its activists carried out the attack early ton July 28. "In keeping with our pledge to resume pipeline attacks within the next 30 days, detonation engineers backed by heavily armed fighters sabotaged two major pipelines," the group said. Shell, which operates in the southern region with Nigeria's state-run oil company, NNPC, said it was still trying to confirm what had happened in the remote region using a surveillance flight over the pipeline's route. Shell only recently resumed full operations of its offshore Bonga oilfield following a MEND attack last month. The facility can produce 200,000 barrels of oil and 150m cubic feet of gas a day. The actions of MEND and other groups in the Niger delta has seen Nigeria's total oil production fall by about 20% since 2006. The country remains the world's eighth largest oil exporter but has fallen behind Angola as Africa's biggest oil producer to Angola because of the unrest. The Shell pipeline, in the forest of the delta, was targeted in May. MEND said last week it would attack oil facilities again to prove it had not been paid off by Nigeria's government following reports it had received money to protect isolated oil facilities. Successive Nigerian governments have bought off leaders of militant groups in the delta by offering financial rewards for laying down their weapons. MEND says its motivation is purely political. It wants the people of the impoverished and polluted Niger delta to gain a greater share of the oil wealth. The plight of the people in the region was brought to worldwide attention in 1995 when Nigeria's then-government hanged the writer and human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who opposed the Niger delta oil industry. Other militant groups are largely criminal operations who focus on kidnapping foreign oil workers. Several foreign firms have left the Niger delta because of security problems.