October 18,2008:
The oil stealing gangs in the
Niger Delta have not been able to build wide support, mainly because the gangs are
criminals and often act that way towards locals. Increased police and military
activity, and the plunging price of oil has sharply cut the income of the
gangs. This has led many of the gang members to supplement their income by
stealing other stuff, usually from the easiest targets. That means the banks
and big companies, with all their security guards, are avoided in favor of stealing
from the less well off. This is bad for the public image of the oil gangs. But
there is no high command of the gangs, no way to control the thousands of young
gunmen looking to replace lost oil income. For example, gangs are running a
protection racket on the larger fishing boats, forcing them to pay a fee for
the right to fish in an area without being attacked. The navy has been unable
to provide enough patrol boats to protect all the fishing boats (who then
continue to pay the extortion fees.)
Over the
last year, the oil industry has bought dozens of patrol boats, and paid the
military to supply weapons and crews. The companies decide where the boats will
operate, which is basically around the company facilities. Although the
government has a program to build new patrol boats locally, this is not
expected to produce additional boats any time soon. The companies cannot wait,
and went to Western boat brokers to buy second-hand military boats. The
Nigerians are particularly hostile to foreign military contractors, so there
are few of those, and used mainly to supervise the Nigerian officers and troops
who are hired (while still receiving their military pay) to guard specific oil
production facilities.
Meanwhile,
the government officials are as corrupt as ever, despite the many senior
officials who are being prosecuted. The problem is that few, if any, of these
officials will go to jail. They will spend their stolen money on bribes and
lawyers, and get off. The lower level officials, who do a lot of the stealing
(you need to bribe most civil servants to get anything done), are still very
much in business.
Oil exports
for this month are averaging about 1.89 million barrels a day. If there are no
major new attacks on the oil industry, production next month should go to 1.95
million barrels a day. It will be a year or more before production gets back to
the potential max of 2.5 million barrels a day.
Cameroon is
increasing its defenses along the 1,700 frontier with Nigeria. This is in
response to a September 28 attack by Nigerian criminals. Storming ashore from
speedboats, heavily armed Nigerian gangsters robbed four banks (using
explosives to get at the cash), killed one person and roared off. Cameroon will
install radar along the coast near Nigeria and increase naval patrols. There
will also be cooperation and coordination with the Nigerian military and
police, to fight the seaborne gangsters. The new violence comes in the wake of Cameroonian
troops moving in to the Bakassi peninsula. This is the final part of a two year
process of turning Bakassi over to Cameroon. This oil rich area used to be
Nigerian, but an international court awarded it to Cameroon. Nigeria began
handing it over two years ago, but some Nigerian groups have continued to fight
for a return to Nigerian rule. The Nigerian gangs are taking advantage of the
less well armed and numerous Cameroon security forces.
October 15,
2008: In the Niger Delta, six speedboats
full of pirates attacked a navy gunboat, with the object of capturing it and
stealing its machine-guns and other weapons. The dusk attack failed, as the patrol
boat crew sank two of the speedboats and forced the others to flee. One soldier
was killed and two wounded.