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Niger Delta crisis: Italian oil giant cuts exports after pipeline blast
AFP
LAGOS
Petroleumworld.com 03 25 06The Italian oil giant ENI warned customers Friday that it might not be able to honour some export contracts after an attack on one of the firm's Nigerian pipelines cut off crude supplies.
A spokesman told AFP from Rome that a March 17 bomb attack on the Tebidaba to Brass pipeline had cut production in the southern Niger Delta by 75,000 barrels per day, 13,000 of them belonging to ENI's subsidiary Agip.
This brings Nigeria's total losses since a renewed campaign of violence against the oil industry to 533,000 barrels per day, according to an AFP tally of reports from oil majors, more than a fifth of the country's output.
The ENI spokesman said the firm hoped to repair the pipeline by the end of the month but in the meantime had declared "force majeure", in order to avoid paying damages to clients expecting to load crude at Brass export terminal.
Since the start of the year separatist guerrillas have launched a series of violent attacks on oil plants across the Niger Delta, a 75,000 square kilometre (29,000 square mile) swathe of coastal swamp which is home to Africa's biggest oil industry.
In addition to blowing up oil and gas pipelines, the militants have kidnapped a total of 13 foreign oil workers. Most have been released, but two Americans and one Briton have been held as hostages for more than a month.
The guerrillas, whom the government has branded pirates and oil smugglers, say they are fighting to force Nigeria's federal government to give the poverty stricken people of the delta control over the region's oil revenues.
- 03/24/2006 10:35 - AFP
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