Militants Blow Up Oil Pipeline In Bayelsa

A crude oil pipeline in
Bayelsa operated by the local subsidiary of Italy’s Eni was attacked on Thursday night, a state lawmaker in the state House of Assembly claimed while talking to Assembly reporters.
This is the second major attack on the oil installation within the Niger Delta region since an arrest warrant was issued this month for former militant leader Government Ekpemupolo, known as Tompolo.
The hits follow years of relative calm in the country’s oil-producing region after a 2009 amnesty halted a spate of attacks on oil installations and kidnappings of expatriate workers.
“I want to condemn the latest attack on the Agip pipeline at Kpongbokiri. This is a clear sabotage by economic saboteurs,” Israel Sunny-Goli, a member of the Bayelsa State Assembly, said after preliminary investigations had been concluded.
He said attackers hit a crude pipeline near Brass, a coastal city and site of a crude export terminal. Eni operates in Nigeria through its subsidiary Nigerian Agip Oil Company.
A spokesman for the oil company said he could not yet say whether exports would be affected.
President Muhammadu Buhari who won last year’s election vowed to crush endemic corruption in the West African nation. Former government and military officials have already been charged, while Tompolo is the first high profile former militant whom the security services have gone after.
Following the amnesty, many former militant leaders were enriched through lucrative pipeline protection contracts under former president Goodluck Jonathan but oil theft reached an industrial scale.

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