Nigeria

It's hopping in oil rich Nigeria this week, where President Olusegun Obasanjo called for a "strategic partnership" between Nigeria and India, according to a report available on Friday while, from a different report , an oil pipeline exploded Friday in Nigeria and up to 200 people may be dead.

The news on the pipeline explosion is so far non committal with respect to cause.
Perhaps the oil pipe line was blown up by so called militants. Or maybe it just blew up from sloppy work from sloppy foreign workers the Nigerian people so obviously don't want there, regardless of what the government wants. Bringing in foreign workers is part of the complaint of the "militants" who want oil company jobs to go to Nigerians, though that isn't all they want.

They also want profit to go back into their communities and they'd like the have the oil companies refrain from destroying their environment.

Apparently they don't have a lot of intellectually and morally twisted right wingnuts running around claiming the environment is safer and better now than it was 200 years ago, such as we have here in Amerikkka.

I talked to one of these wing nuts a week ago. He was so scary I merely listened quietly, then walked away after he assured me water is much healthier now than it was 200 years ago when it was full of bacteria.

I didn't bother to explain it wasn't FULL of bacteria, or that most bacteria can be killed with antibiotics whereas rocket fuel, also called Perchlorate, kills people and animals who drink such contaminants. Or that Cryptosporidium in the water system of Milwaukee, or any city, harms many more people than it could harm whne found in Farmer Klinks pond in 1809, or that right wing class assaults and greedy republican penchants for deregulation have made everything we touch and consume much less safe by cutting back inspection and enforcement apparatus of all kinds, which is why we continually find e-coli in our school lunches, and don't even get me started on Bovine Spongeform Encephalitis, or mad cow, which the right wing government refuses to do anything about.

But I digress, so back to Africa, where the militant-insurgent-rebel-guerilla communist parasites kidnap oil workers then let them go, except for the killing of one American working for an American company, which sends another clear message about how the world loves Amerikkkans, though the main "militant" group does not appear to be responsible for this particular homicide.

So what do these militants have to say?

Nigeria's oil resources have gone to waste. The estimated US$350 billion earned from oil by the government between 1965 and 2000 did little to alleviate poverty in Nigeria and, according to many studies, actually exacerbated deprivation through the opportunities it provided for corruption and abuse. Nigeria is among the 15 poorest countries in the world and 70% of its people live below the poverty line.

While all of Nigeria has suffered from this waste, the oil producing regions of the Delta have borne an even greater burden. The pollution of air, land and water has been ceaseless for over 45 years. Conflict has plagued the region as the powerful few vie for the spoils from oil.

As traditional livelihoods of fishing and farming have been decimated by oil spills and precious little development has resulted from oil revenues, so the growth of disaffection and criminal activity has spread throughout the region.

Millions of barrels of oil are being stolen from the leaking infrastructure, providing funds for a widespread escalation in armed violence and political corruption. Over 1000 people per year are dying in armed conflict in the Niger Delta today.

Gunmen briefly kidnapped three foreign oil workers in southern Nigeria, a day after an American oil worker was killed in the same city, the hub of the oil industry in this key U.S. supplier.
[...]
"They are well, they were not subjected to any violence," Eni spokesman Gianni Di Giovanni told private TV Sky Italia.

Di Giovanni said the kidnappings stemmed from a "strictly commercial" problem, possibly motivated by opposition to certain deals. He did not elaborate.

Di Giovanni said he could not comment on whether a ransom was paid for their release. "The important thing is that our fellow citizen and his two colleagues are safe, sound and free," he said.

It was the second attack this week on foreigners in Port Harcourt, where many oil-services companies keep their main Nigerian operations.

An unidentified gunman riding a motorcycle Wednesday shot and killed an American riding in a car to work at the offices of the U.S. drilling equipment maker Baker Hughes Inc.

Crude oil futures jumped more than $1 a barrel Thursday as the news intensified worries about supply disruptions in Africa's leading oil exporter, the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports.

A militant movement whose attacks on oil installations have cut more than 20 percent of Nigeria's 2.5 million barrel daily production said Tuesday it would target oil workers with fresh attacks.

But a spokesman for the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said in an e-mail to The Associated Press Thursday that the group wasn't responsible for either the slaying or the kidnappings.

The group has kidnapped American and other foreign oil workers and released them unharmed.