Reports say that a crude oil pipeline in Nigeria’s southern state of Bayelsa operated by the local subsidiary of Italy’s Eni was attacked on Thursday night. This is the second major attack on the OPEC member’s installations 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 was quoted to have 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 Nigeria’s state oil company said he could not yet say whether exports would be affected.
President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign has declared many former government and military but Tompolo is the first high-profile former militant which the security services have gone after. Following the amnesty granted during the Yaradua-Jonathan administration, many former leaders enriched themselves through lucrative pipeline protection contracts but oil theft reached an industrial scale during the last administration led by President Good luck Ebele Jonathan.
The NNPC was forced to shut down the Kaduna and Port Harcourt refineries following an attack on pipelines bringing crude to the plants.
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