Nigerian militants have claimed an attack on Chevron-operated oil pipelines — less than two weeks after the government declared a cease-fire, and even as a worker strike further hampered efforts to restore production in the West African country.
Rebels known as the Niger Delta Avengers late Wednesday blew up remote pipe systems, which followed an attacked earlier this week of an oil well and two crude-oil trunk lines.
Nigerian production due to militant attacks dropped to a 28-year low in May, which could be further hampered by a strike that began Thursday, with senior oil workers protesting job losses and delays to new energy legislation.
The nation’s output fell to 1.37 million barrels a day (MMBPD) in May, according to the International Energy Agency. That reduction, coupled with low oil prices, has caused severe economic problems.
The activity of the militants “makes it increasingly unlikely that Nigerian oil production, which is currently being additionally curtailed by a strike, will regain its ‘normal level’ of a good 2 million barrels per day [MMBPD] again in anything like the near future,” Commerzbank AG analysts said, in a research note
Nigeria was Africa’s biggest oil producer until rebels in the Niger River delta region started targeting oil infrastructure in February.
While output recovered to 1.9 MMBPD late in June, “I believe the recent attacks have taken us back below 1.5 million,” Dolapo Oni, a Lagos-based analyst at Ecobank Transnational, told Bloomberg.
