Big guns, big oil collide in Nigeria

…They call themselves the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND. They insist what they’re trying to do is mend what they say is the unequal distribution from the profits Nigeria gets from its oil bonanza.

Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer. In 2005, it was the world’s sixth largest exporter of oil, but the conflict there has cut distribution by an estimated 500,000 barrels per day, the U.S. Department of Energy said in November.


Very little of the profits makes it back to Nigeria, and even less makes it down to the mangrove swamps of the Niger Delta.

As a result, MEND in recent months has escalated its struggle, kidnapping expatriate oil workers at an alarming rate (more than 30 in the last month alone), indiscriminately killing Nigerian military forces, and carrying out attacks on oil installations in the region that cut the flow of oil dramatically.

CNN