Gunmen opened fire on a boat transporting Eni SpA workers in the Niger Delta region of southern Nigeria. Two people died in the attack according to the oil giant’s e-mailed statement.
The team was attacked on Wednesday, June 29, 2016 while “on the way to a well location for routine operations in the Nembe area,” the Italian oil company said on Saturday, July 2, 2016 “Three members of the team managed to escape.”
Eni also revealed that the bodies of the two victims of the attack were missing and found two days later. Security agencies are investigating the incident which occurred in Bayelsa State.
Mr. Desmond Agu, a commandant of the Nigerian Civil Defence Force confirmed the attack saying that no group has claimed responsibility. Agu led a team which was part of the search party that recovered the bodies.
Restiveness and militancy has returned to the oil-rich Niger Delta region. Several militant groups have emerged threatening violence against oil installations in the country.
The leading force in the surge of violence is the Niger Delta Avengers, a group that says it does not attack oil workers or security forces. The Avengers has successfully mounted attacks against “major and strategic” oil pipelines and wells in the troubled region.
Over the week, the group claims it destroyed five major pipelines and oil wells belonging to the state-owned oil company in Nigeria, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, and Chevron Nigeria Limited.
Niger Delta Avengers calls its campaign, Operation Red Economy, and it has plummeted Nigeria’s oil output to the lowest in about thirty years, according to the International Energy Agency.
The renewed crisis in the region began late 2015 with advent of the Muhammadu Buhari administration.
Militants accuse the new president of tribalism, nepotism, and “declaring war on the region” in ending oil pipeline security contracts which were handled by former Niger Delta warlords and slashing monthly stipends paid to former militants who accepted a government amnesty created to end insurgency in the region in 2009.
