Nigeria’s top military and security officials met on Monday with oil company executives and parliamentarians to try to thrash out a solution to the worsening security situation in the Niger Delta, which has slashed Nigeria’s oil output.
House Committee on Petroleum Upstream chairman Tom Brisibe, who convened the meeting, said: “We asked the international oil companies about their internal security arrangements and the arrangements they have with the Nigerian security forces. We asked the companies what they feel should be done.”
“One solution that some are thinking about is increased active participation from local host communities — that is active ownership of the assets in the oil industry as much as practicable,” Bisibe said.
Ann Pickard, Shell’s most senior executive in Nigeria, said the company would like “to get back to production as soon as possible at Bonga.”
The big question is how.
It was Thursday’s attack on Bonga, the deep-sea field operated by Shell 120km off the coast of Nigeria that sparked the panic. Until Thursday such fields had been seen as being safe from militant attacks.
When he came to power just over a year ago, Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua appeared more willing than his predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo, to hold talks with the armed groups in the Delta.
The attack on Bonga has cast doubts on whether talks work any better than the more strong-arm tactics Obasanjo tended to favor. Observers warn that Yar’Adua’s entourage still counts a number of hawks.
“The government needs to crack down hard,” an executive with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation said shortly after the Bonga attack.
Yar’Adua himself responded to the Bonga attack by ordering the military and security forces to “take all necessary measures” to arrest those responsible and bring them to justice.
He then deployed two small warships in the waters around Bonga on Saturday.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition