*Sources: DTN News / Reuters By Nick Tattersall
* Militants say attack two pipelines in eastern Niger Delta
* Shell says investigating
* Militants also claim strike on shallow offshore field
(NSI News Source Info) LAGOS, Nigeria - June 21, 2009: Nigeria's main militant group said on Sunday its fighters had attacked two Royal Dutch Shell oil pipelines in Rivers state and a shallow-water offshore field, widening a month-old offensive.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta ("MEND") is a militant indigenous people's movement dedicated to armed struggle against what they regard as the exploitation and oppression of the people of the Niger Delta and the degradation of the natural environment by foreign multinational corporations involved in the extraction of oil in the Niger Delta and the Federal Government of Nigeria. MEND has been linked to attacks on foreign-owned petroleum companies in Nigeria as part of the Conflict in the Niger Delta.
MEND's stated goals are to localize control of Nigeria's oil and to secure reparations from the federal government for pollution caused by the oil industry. In an interview with one of the group's leaders, who used the alias Major-General Godswill Tamuno, the BBC reported that MEND was fighting for "total control" of the Niger Delta's oil wealth, saying local people had not gained from the riches under the ground and the region's creeks and swamps." The Economist has described the organization as one that "portrays itself as political organisation that wants a greater share of Nigeria’s oil revenues to go to the impoverished region that sits atop the oil. In fact, it is more of an umbrella organisation for several armed groups, which it sometimes pays in cash or guns to launch attacks."
In a January 2006 email MEND warned the oil industry, "It must be clear that the Nigerian government cannot protect your workers or assets. Leave our land while you can or die in it.... Our aim is to totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil."
Additionally MEND has called upon President Olusegun Obasanjo to free two jailed ethnic Ijaw leaders — Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, who is jailed and charged with treason, and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, a former governor of Bayelsa State charged with corruption. Obasanjo's successor, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua authorised the release of Dokubo-Asari and Alamieyeseigha in 2007.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said it had attacked Shell pipelines at Adamakiri and Kula, both in Rivers in the eastern Niger Delta, early on Sunday as part of a campaign it has dubbed "Hurricane Piper Alpha".
"Piper Alpha unleashed its fury in Rivers state today... leaving in its wake two battered oil installations," the group said in a statement.
It said it had also later attacked an offshore Shell oilfield in shallow water between the states of Bayelsa and Delta further to the west.
Shell said it was investigating reports of the two pipeline attacks on its eastern operations in the Niger Delta and was assessing any impact on output and the environment. It could not confirm MEND's claim of an attack on the shallow-water facility.
The attacks are the first to strike Rivers state, the easternmost of the three main states in the Niger Delta, since the militants launched their latest campaign of sabotage following a military offensive in the western delta last month.
Persistent acts of sabotage by MEND over the past three years have cut oil output in the OPEC member, the world's eighth biggest crude oil exporter, to less than two thirds of its installed capacity of 3 million barrels per day (bpd).
The group first burst onto the scene in late 2005, knocking out more than a quarter of Nigeria's oil output -- then around 2.4 million bpd -- in a matter of weeks.
But the latest campaign has nibbled further at production levels in a country that relies on oil for around 90 percent of its foreign earnings.
Italian energy firm Agip said on Friday an attack claimed by MEND on one of its oil and gas pipelines in Bayelsa state had halted production of around 33,000 barrels of oil and 2 million cubic metres of gas per day.
Shell said on Thursday some oil production had been halted following an attack on the Trans Ramos pipeline late on Wednesday at Aghoro-2 community in Bayelsa.
U.S. energy firm Chevron shut down its operations around Delta state after MEND's first pipeline attack in its latest campaign on May 24, halting around 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) of output.
Security sources say some oil firms have been removing non-essential personnel from some offshore sites.
MEND has dubbed its offensive "Hurricane Piper Alpha" after the North Sea oil platform that blew up in July 1998, the worst ever offshore oil disaster, and warned that it might attack deep-water facilities off the Nigerian coast.
The militants say they are fighting against the militarisation of the Niger Delta and for a fairer share for local communities of the region's natural wealth, but the line between militancy and criminality is blurred.
The leaders of armed gangs in the Niger Delta have grown rich from a lucrative trade in stolen oil and from ransoms paid for the release of hundreds of oil workers who have been kidnapped in recent years.
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