Nigeria oil threat 'not tolerated'
 | Nigeria's top oil producer, Royal Dutch Shell Group, says it evacuated more than 200 workers. |
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 CNN's Andrew Carey reports on what is causing the oil price spike.
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| FACT BOX | NET OIL EXPORTERS
(millions of barrels per day, 2003)
1. Saudi Arabia 8.38
2. Russia 5.81
3. Norway 3.02
4. Iran 2.48
5. UAE 2.29
6. Venezuela 2.23
Source: U.S. Department of Energy June 2004
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ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) -- President Olusegun Obasanjo has warned he will not tolerate threats to Nigeria's oil industry as his government continued talks with a militia leader to end a wave of violence that's unsettled global oil markets.
Militia leader Moujahid Dokubo-Asari, who heads the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, threatened earlier this week to launch a "full-scale" armed struggle Friday to press his demands for autonomy and greater control over oil resources in the Niger Delta.
"Let me assure those patriotic, peaceful and law-abiding Nigerians that government will not tolerate in any way or form, any act that would mortgage or compromise the interest of the majority," Obasanjo said in speech broadcast to mark Nigeria's 44th anniversary of independence from Britain.
"The government is taking steps to stem the tide of undue militancy and we are confident that reason and the law will prevail."
There were no reports of fighting Friday, but Dokubo-Asari said government troops had moved nine military gunboats and two helicopter gunships into militia territory in the delta and were poised for a "cordon and search" operation.
"If I go to the talks this morning and there is no satisfactory explanation, I will tell them we want to go," Dokubo-Asari told The Associated Press. "If they don't want us to go they can arrest us, our people on the ground will take action."
Dokubo-Asari has warned foreign oil companies to withdraw their workers and quit the region. The threats helped send world crude oil prices to the historic peak of more than US$50 a barrel.
Nigeria, the world's seventh-largest crude exporter and fifth-largest source of U.S. oil imports, produces 2.5 million barrels of crude oil daily.
Dokubo-Asari, normally based in a camp in the mangrove swamps of the delta, has been in Abuja since Wednesday for talks he said were initiated by Obasanjo.
Dokubo-Asari said the two sides agreed to temporarily halt attacks on one another. But government officials have made little comment, and military officials say they've received no orders to cease fire.
"We are talking to those I described as rascally elements from the Niger Delta in the effort to open lines of dialogue and peace as they feel aggrieved," Obasanjo said in Friday's speech.
Dokubo-Asari is seen as a folk hero by many poor residents of the southern delta region who complain they have never shared in the country's vast oil wealth.
He claims to be fighting for self-determination in the region and greater control over oil resources for more than 8 million Ijaws, the dominant tribe in the southern delta region.
The government had routinely dismissed Dokubo-Asari's group as criminals, accusing them of illegally siphoning oil from pipelines.
Widespread violence in the region often results in severe disruptions to oil operations.
In March 2003, fighting between rival ethnic militia groups in the west of the Niger Delta, near the oil port city of Warri -- which also drew in government troops -- forced oil companies to shut down 40 percent of Nigeria's oil exports for several weeks.
Copyright 2004 The
Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
