Nigeria's main militant group said today it was not directly responsible for the sabotage of an oil pipeline that forced Royal Dutch Shell to shut down three pumping stations.
The sabotage on Saturday came hours after the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) ended a three-month old ceasefire and threatened to unleash "an all-out assault" on Africa's biggest oil and gas industry.
While Mend said the attack was the work of a militant group it backed, one security source, who declined to be identified, said the sabotage on Shell's pipeline, in Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta, might have been carried out by oil thieves trying to tap into it.
"Mend was not directly responsible," the group said in an email to Reuters. "It was certainly a response to our order to resume hostilities by one of the various freelance groups we endorse."
Shell said yesterday the sabotage had caused some oil to spill into the delta's creeks and that it was in the process of recovering spilled crude.
Attacks by militants and disgruntled community members on Nigeria's oil sector in the past few years have prevented the Opec member from producing much above two-thirds of its capacity, costing it about $1 billion a month in lost revenues.
Reuters