Two explosions hit Nigeria’s oil industry on Monday, industry sources said, moments after a militant group threatened to detonate three car bombs in the Niger Delta.
There were no casualties reported in either explosion and no immediate impact on oil output from the world’s eighth largest exporter.
The first explosion, from an apparent car bomb, hit Royal Dutch Shell’s residential compound in the southern oil capital of Port Harcourt, an oil industry source said.
”There was a bomb blast in a Shell residential area in Port Harcourt,” the source said.
A second blast hit the perimeter fence of the compound of Italian oil company Agip, a unit of ENI, also in Port Harcourt, industry sources said.
The explosion followed a warning by a militant group that it was about to detonate three car bombs in strategic locations across the Niger Delta, home to Nigeria’s oil industry.
”Operatives of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta successfully planted three car bombs in strategic locations around the Niger Delta. These bombs will be detonated any minute from now,” the e-mail said.
The group, known as Mend, is currently holding four foreign oil workers hostage.
Mend detonated two car bombs earlier this year, one in a military barracks in the delta’s largest city, Port Harcourt, and another near an oil refinery in Warri, but their impact was limited.
Mend also carried out a series of crippling attacks on oil facilities in February, which forced Royal Dutch Shell to pull out of the western Delta, cutting Nigerian oil exports by a fifth. — Reuters