An explosion in Chanoni creek in Gbaramatu Kingdom in the Niger Delta damaged an oil pipeline Wednesday leading to the spilling of a yet to be specified volume of oil.
Jane Oraka, a resident of Gbaramatu, said locals believed that the explosion was caused by bomb left behind by ‘Operation Restore Hope’ troops.
‘Operation Restore Hope,’ the name of a government operation to pacify the turbulent Niger Delta, used the explosives to destroy barges belonging to oil thieves.
Representatives of the troops were unreachable to comment on the explosion.
Royal Dutch Shell, the major oil company operating in the area, did not confirm if the affected pipelines were theirs.
Ethnic Ijaw militants, operating under the aegis of a pressure group, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, blew up pipelines in Gbaramatu in February and took nine expatriate oil workers hostage.
Shell and Gbaramatu Kingdom had been having a face-off since January, leading to the stoppage of production of some 445,000 barrels of crude oil or about 20 per cent of Nigeria’s daily production of 2.1 billion barrels by Shell in the area.
Nine expatriate oil workers of Houston, Texas-based oil service company Wilbros Group, were abducted last month while laying pipelines for Shell in the area.
The hostages have yet to be released.
Reacting to violence in the Niger Delta, in Iraq and Saudi Arabia the price of oil has shot to more than 60 dollars a barrel since the beginning of the year.