I’ve been doing some digging on this and I’m not convinced that the story is accurate. Having made some calls, I can’t find any confirmation of it.
It has been reported on both CNN and BBC as well as most of the other major news agencies.
My humble opinion is that this is a fine example of Port Harcourt gossip gone mad.
I will update if I hear anything to the contrary.
This is the story according to CNN
Nigerian militants who have kidnapped nine foreign oil workers said they had blown up a military houseboat and an oil pipeline manifold on Monday, the latest attacks in a campaign that has cut exports by a fifth.
In an e-mail, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta also threatened to attack any vessel trying to use Royal Dutch Shell’s 340,000 barrel-per-day Forcados oil export platform, which the group bombed on Saturday.
“Patrol units … carried out attacks on one houseboat belonging to the Nigerian army and the Shell Ughelli Odidi-Escravos manifold. Both were destroyed with explosives,” the militants said, adding that the soldiers in the houseboat fled before it was destroyed.
The militants said that Shell was planning to use one manifold on the Forcados export platform which was not damaged in Saturday’s attack to export oil.
“Regardless of whatever security arrangements they depend on and time of the day, we will attack this vessel and execute everyone on board. It is needless to say what will happen to the surviving manifold in the next few hours,” they said.
The government says the militant movement is a cover for thieves siphoning crude oil on a commercial scale from pipelines across the vast wetlands region of southern Nigeria.
The militants accused Nigerian military and security commanders in the area of being responsible for the theft.
“Oil is not like diamonds and requires ships to come in unhindered. This is facilitated by the heads of these security organisations who are paid a standard fee for every vessel loaded,” they said.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, which claims to be fighting for a greater local share of Nigeria’s oil wealth, claimed responsibility Saturday for a series of raids, including one in which militants abducted three Americans, two Egyptians, two Thais, one Briton and one Filipino. (Full story)
A man identifying himself as the commander of the movement told The Associated Press by telephone his group was poised to escalate the violence by firing rockets at crude oil tankers offshore.
“We’ll use our rockets on the ships to stop them from taking our oil,” said the man, who gave his name as Efie Alari. His identity could not be independently verified, but the call came from a number used by the group before.