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Nigeria’s Oil Output Highest since November 2007

By on July 15, 2011

Nigeria’s oil production has bounced back to its highest level since November 2007, but a militant threat to resume hostilities should be taken seriously, a presidential adviser said Thursday.

Kingsley Kuku, a presidential adviser on the Niger Delta, the country’s main oil-producing region, said Nigeria is producing 2.6 million barrels of crude oil a day, up from 2.3 million barrels a day one month ago. He was speaking at a conference at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House.

The recent increase in crude production is tied to an end of force majeure on Bonny crude supplies.

Kuku said the steady improvement should be attributed to a successful amnesty for militants in 2009. However, Kuku, who is also the chairman of the presidential amnesty committee, said a threat by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta to resume attacks on the oil industry shouldn’t be dismissed.

“If MEND doesn’t exist, why is somebody talking for MEND,” he told reporters. “I take every threat seriously.”

“The government has to deal with it or reach to” MEND, Kuku said.

The presidential adviser also insisted Henry Okah, a former MEND leader now on trial in South Africa, should receive a fair trial.

He warned that peace “might not last” if oil companies don’t hire more Niger Delta inhabitants and invest more in local development. “Oil and gas industry, you have responsibility,” he said.

Kuku, himself from the Delta, said Boko Haram, an Islamic group in northern Nigeria, shouldn’t be pardoned–unlike militants in his region. “I do not think that is one the government should think about,” he said. “There is no amnesty for them.”

Kuku said Boko Haram is based on religion and practices indiscriminate violence, while Delta militants were looking for better revenue redistribution and targeted oil companies. Boko Haram recently claimed what may be the country’s first suicide attack.

MarketWatch