Nigerian militants Monday threatened retaliation against army soldiers following the death of two workers in an army shooting Jan. 4, which also led to an attack at a Chevron Corp. (CVX) site.
In an email to Dow Jones Newswires, a spokesman for the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said “the retaliation will be against the JTF [ army Joint Task Force] who will have two of their own killed in revenge.”
The JTF confirmed Monday that one of its soldiers was involved in a shooting that killed two workers at the site of a Chevron gas project in Escravos on Jan. 4. In a statement, Chevron said “an incident involving Government Security Forces and some employees of a subcontractor to the company near the construction site” of its gas project “resulted in two fatalities and injury to four others.”
On Friday, militants sabotaged a Chevron pipeline, shutting down 20,000 barrels a day in the first output disruption tied to an attack since a cease- fire decreed last year. Asked if the attack Friday was tied to the killing of the two workers earlier in the week, the spokesman said, “it certainly was.” The sabotage, which was sanctioned by MEND but carried out by another group, was ” not a retaliation against Chevron per se but an opportunity to strike again where the incident happened,” the spokesman said.
The gas project and the pipeline are both located in Delta State, in the Western part of the Niger Delta. Militants have routinely targeted oil companies as a way to hurt the interest of the Nigerian state.