Armed youths blew up a Nigerian crude oil pipeline operated by U.S. major Chevron, a militant group said on Saturday, cutting more output from the world’s eighth largest oil exporter.
The military said about 120,000 barrels per day of crude oil production were shut by the sabotage.
“For production to have stopped, this shows the damage was serious,” said army Brigadier-General Wuyep Rintip, head of the government’s Joint Task Force in the western Delta.
A Chevron spokeswoman confirmed that one of its pipelines was damaged, but declined to say how much output was affected.
A wave of attacks in the West African country has cut production by a fifth since early 2006, helping push world oil prices to record highs.
Thursday’s incident came hours after a bold night-time militant attack on Royal Dutch Shell’s main offshore oil facility that cut Nigeria’s oil output by 10 percent.
“MEND wishes to commend these patriotic youths who we are now empowering with more powerful explosives and new techniques to destroy additional pipelines inside Delta state,” the group said in an email to Reuters.
Violence in the Niger Delta stems from a complex set of factors including poverty, lack of basic services, corruption among government officials and security forces, resentment toward foreign oil companies, and political thuggery.
[Read more via Reuters]
Are the youth idiots or just moronic?
If prices of oil continues to rise, how would it help in their quest to quell their poverty and corruption?
No thanks to them pushing oil prices further up.
But there’s always a silver lining…
Telecommuting is gaining in popularity, with fuel costs making it extremely expensive for some employees to commute to work, however, according to CIO Insight Research’s Mobility Survey, 51 percent of CIOs and other senior IT leaders surveyed said their companies discourage fulltime telecommuting.
An equal number of the 237 respondents—24 percent each—said their firms encourage fulltime telecommuting or remain neutral.
Still, with what feels as an unending increase in fuel costs, businesses may have little choice but to let more employees work from home.
Otherwise, as the Telework Exchange survey suggests, employees will seek other places, closer to home, to work.
Indeed, nearly three of 10 workers are already doing that. And, nine of 10 said they’d limit job searchers due to commuting costs.
I think as costs of oil inevitably goes north, more companies will open up to the option of working from home.
(That’s a good thing right? =))
[Read more of the article here]
