"This is modern-day slavery."

Militants from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta patrolling the delta. Photographs by Michael Kamber.

Blood Oil
Could a bunch of Nigerian militants in speedboats bring about a U.S. recession? Blowing up facilities and taking hostages, they are wreaking havoc on the oil production of America's fifth-largest supplier. Deep in the Niger-delta swamps, the author meets the nightmarish result of four decades of corruption.
by Sebastian Junger February 2007

In January 2006, less than seven months after the first Oil ShockWave conference—almost as if they'd been given walk-on parts in the simulation—several boatloads of heavily armed Ijaw militants overran a Shell oil facility in the Niger delta and seized four Western oil workers. The militants called themselves the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta and said they were protesting the environmental devastation caused by the oil industry, as well as the appalling conditions in which most delta inhabitants live. There are no schools, medical clinics, or social services in most delta villages. There is no clean drinking water in delta villages. There are almost no paying jobs in delta villages. People eke out a living by fishing while, all around them, oil wells owned by foreign companies pump billions of dollars' worth of oil a year. It was time, according to MEND, for this injustice to stop.

The immediate effect of the attack was a roughly 250,000-barrel-a-day drop in Nigerian oil production and a temporary bump in world oil prices. MEND released the hostages a few weeks later, but the problems were far from over. MEND's demands included the release of two Ijaw leaders who were being held in prison, $1.5 billion in restitution for damage to the delicate delta environment, a 50 percent claim on all oil pumped out of the creeks, and development aid to the desperately poor villages of the delta. MEND threatened that, if these demands were not met—which they weren't—it would wage war on the foreign oil companies in Nigeria. "Leave our land while you can or die in it," a MEND spokesman warned in an e-mail statement after the attack. "Our aim is to totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil."

Because Nigerian oil is so vital to the American economy, President Bush's State Department declared in 2002 that—along with all other African oil imports—it was to be considered a "strategic national interest." That essentially meant that the president could send in the U.S. military to protect our access to it. After the first MEND attack, events in the Niger delta unfolded almost as if they had been scripted by alarmist Pentagon planners. In mid-February, MEND struck again, seizing a barge operated by the American oil-services company Willbros and grabbing nine more hostages. Elsewhere on the same day, other MEND fighters blew up an oil pipeline, a gas pipeline, and a tanker-loading terminal, forcing Shell to suspend 477,000 barrels a day in exports. The nine hostages were released after a reportedly huge ransom was paid, but oil prices on the world market again started to climb. MEND had shown that 20 guys in speedboats could affect oil prices around the world. <Skip>

A MEND militant painted with magical symbols to protect him from bullets.

The problem isn't purely a Nigerian one, either. Oil companies have long been thought to pay for the allegiance of local youth gangs, and Jomo claims that Agip offered to pay MEND $40 million in exchange for "repairs" to the company's pipelines. (An Agip spokesman strongly denies any payment to or contact with MEND.) The American corporation Halliburton has admitted that its then subsidiary KBR paid $2.4 million in bribes to the Nigerian government and is under investigation for its role in earlier bribes totaling $180 million. And House representative William Jefferson, of Louisiana, is being investigated by the F.B.I. for allegedly accepting bribes from the vice president of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar. These were said to be in exchange for help steering lucrative business contracts to Africa. (Jefferson has denied any wrongdoing, despite the fact that the F.B.I. found $90,000 in cash in his freezer.) <skip>

"The Niger-delta people are the new world power," Owei informed me solemnly. "I don't have a bulletproof vest, but I can drink acid. Can you drink acid? I can drink acid. We are a world power. We are waiting. We want to live in peace because God is peaceful, but the rest of the world is building armaments while they wait for Jesus. I don't know." The original concerns of activists such as Saro-Wiwa were environmental degradation of the delta from oil spills, and the extreme poverty and backwardness of the villages. Two and a half million barrels of crude spilled or leaked into the delicate riverine environment between 1986 and 1996, resulting in wholesale devastation of the fish stocks that most villagers rely on. Flaring of excess natural gas has produced a blighting acid rain in the mangrove swamps, and freshwater even around wells that have been capped for years is still so polluted with hydrocarbons that it cannot be drunk safely. But people still do. <skip>

"The host community here," the man went on, waving at the ramshackle houses, "they are without electricity for days sometimes. This is obscene. They are looking through the fence at golf courses and tennis courts where the floodlights are on at midnight. Why not throw them an electric line? I mentioned it to someone at Shell. I said, 'Why not? You've got the turbines! Let there be light!' He said, 'If we do that, they'll all want that.'" <skip>

That did not stop the U.S. government from authorizing a joint training exercise with the Nigerian military in 2004. It was reported to have been focused on "water combat." The Nigerian government has been marginalizing the people who have the resources of this country. We are deprived of our rights. This time around we don't even want to wait for them to attack. When the order is given we can go ahead and crumble whoever we can crumble, because we don't die; we live by the grace of God. If one man remains, that man can win the cause—that is my own belief." I had heard this before—that the delta was bracing for a wave of attacks. The attacks were rumored to include coordinated car bombings, assassinations, and hostage-taking. I asked Brutus what was going to happen next. "The first phase was just a test run for the equipment," he assured me. "Soon the real violence will come up and will be let loose. We are waiting for the orders from above and we won't waste an hour.… This is modern-day slavery. They have killed so many people in the struggle. The government will attack us, but we are very ready for them. We are just waiting for orders from above. Then we will move."