Speaker's 70-year-old Mother Still Being Held (Daily Champion)
The whereabouts of Mrs Hansel Seibaragu, mother of the Speaker, Bayelsa state House of Assembly, kidnapped Wednesday by yet-to-be- identified gun men at Akaibiri in Epketiama, Yenagoa local government area, is still unknown 48 hours after the incident.
Meanwhile, investigations by Daily Champion revealed that the family of the speaker, Hon. Werinipre Seibaragu, has relocated from their Yenagoa residence to an unknown area for security reasons.
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This is as some youths sympathetic to the plight of the speaker have headed for Ekuluoma in Southern Ijaw local government area, where it is alleged that Madam Hansel is being held hostage by her captors to possibly secure their release.
Also, economic activities have been paralyzed in the entire Akaibiri community, following the abduction of the 70-year-old Madam Seibaragu, just as a close security source said the family of the speaker may have gone into hiding.
But when contacted on telephone, special assistant to the speaker on media, Mr. Jonah Okah, said he was not aware of such development, but stated that, "well for somebody of his status the provision of security would not be out of place especially in the present circumstances," but added that the family is working with the security agencies to ensure the release of the speaker's mother.
Okah, however said his boss who had traveled to South Africa along with some principal officers of the assembly for a parliamentary conference, is due back in Yenagoa, the state capital today.
On the whereabouts of the speaker's wife, Okah said, Mrs. Seibarugu had just been delivered of a baby, and should be left out of the current travails. He, however expressed optimism that the old woman would be released soon, saying she is innocent and had not done anything to deserve what she is presently passing through.
The state police spokesman, Mr. Iniobong Ikpokette in a telephone chat with Daily Champion said the command was yet to trace the whereabouts of madam Seibarugu, but noted that one of the suspects arrested in connection with the kidnap was making useful statements to the command. He, however, revealed that all security outfits in the state have spread their dragnet to track down the kidnappers.
Governor Timipre Sylva of Bayesla State who only yesterday sent his words of consolation to the speaker, had travelled to Abuja.
Kidnappers Now Targeting Nigerians (News 24)
More reports are emerging of kidnapping rings targeting wealthy Nigerians - perhaps because foreign oil workers are getting harder to snatch.
The children of five prominent families had been seized in southern Rivers State in the past two months; a powerful politician in nearby Delta state was kidnapped and beheaded over the weekend; and gunmen seized the mother of a local official in Bayelsa State on Tuesday.
Kidnappings in Nigeria's south - which was rich in oil, but underdeveloped - first began after impoverished communities took oil workers hostage to protest pollution or failed development projects. Now, criminal gangs had moved in, and kidnappings were on the increase.
Damke Pueba, an activist with civil society group, Stakeholders Democracy Network, said: "No one feels safe anymore. This last year has really been the worst."
New gang members get incentives
Pueba added: "There are lots of groups that you can hire to settle scores with anyone...almost all of them are backed by one corrupt politician or another."
Pointing to a recent scheme announced by the state government to reward gang members who renounced their membership with cash, Pueba said, "that is just an incentive for people to join the gangs".
State officials were not available for comment on the plan.
A Nigeria-based analyst with private security company, Armorgroup, said that the payment of ransoms, relatively low arrest rate and the relocation of many foreign oil workers might also be encouraging kidnappers to turn to Nigerian victims.
He said it was impossible to track kidnappings of Nigerians without reliable statistics, but as oil companies restricted staff movements, more reports of kidnapped Nigerians who were not associated with oil companies were surfacing in local papers and in security circles.
Port Harcourt 'Nigeria's biggest oil city'
He said: "As expatriate targets get harder or rarer, criminals will have to look elsewhere if they want to carry out kidnappings ... anybody with wealth is a target."
Foreign workers in the Delta typically travelled in armed convoys, lived and worked in floodlit compounds protected by high walls and barbed wire, and were forbidden to go out after dark.
Residents of Nigeria's biggest oil city, Port Harcourt, had dubbed the heavily guarded compounds "the Green Zone", a wry reference to the Baghdad area that was home to the United States embassy and the Iraqi government headquarters, an island of relative - and heavily guarded - calm in Iraq's chaos.
Nigeria is Africa's largest crude producer and an important supplier to world markets. But the oil wealth has been stolen or squandered by the country's leaders.
More than 250 foreigners had been seized in the oil-rich south in the last 20 months, and an unknown number of Nigerians.
Amid accusations that government officials took a cut of ransoms they helped negotiate, some kidnap victims preferred not to report incidents to the authorities.
Shell Donates Boats to Bayelsa Community (The Tide)
Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) has donated three 12-seat speed boats to Fantua Community in Bayelsa. The company’s Area B Community Interface Coordinator, Mr Suoton Amade, said during the handover Ceremony in Port Harcourt that the donation was to enable the community to start a commercial water transport scheme. Amade said that the scheme, if properly handled, would employ 19 members of the Fantua community and positively affect their lives. He explained that SPDC had already held business literacy and technical skills training for those who would handle the scheme. He called on the community leaders; to ensure judicious use of the boats. The coordinator noted that the three boats were built by an indigenous boat company, Epenal Boat Builders Ltd., at a total cost of N11.5 million. The boats were given to the community with a spare 75 horse power engine and complete safety kits and N100,000 as initial working capital. The community was also given N60,000 to transport the boats home. Responding, Chairman of Fantua Community Development Committee, Ogbomo Allen thanked Shell for the gesture. He expressed the community’s readiness to effectively utilise the boats.
Nigerian Navy Officers Booted for Bunkering Oil (Reuters)
Nigeria's navy has retired 10 officers, including a rear admiral, because of evidence they were involved in smuggling stolen crude oil, the chief of navy staff was reported as saying by the official news agency.
Nigeria is the world's eighth biggest exporter of crude oil but a sizeable proportion of its output is stolen by thieves who either drill into pipelines or hijack barges loaded with oil. The theft and smuggling of oil are known as "bunkering".
Industry experts say much of the violence that plagues the oil-producing Niger Delta is connected to bunkering.
Armed gangs fight turf wars over bunkering territory, they say, while corrupt government officials and members of the security forces protect the gangs in exchange for a cut of the profits. Proceeds from bunkering fuel crime and militancy.
It is rare for the Nigerian armed forces to recognise that any of their own are involved, however, or to comment on the problem.
"They (the navy officers) were involved in oil bunkering," Chief of Navy Staff Ganiyu Adeyeye was quoted as saying by the News Agency of Nigeria late on Thursday.
He was answering questions from a House of Representatives committee investigating the retirement of a rear admiral and nine other officers. He said the navy had "formal intelligence reports" against them.
Proceeds from bunkering are a major source of funding for militants in the Niger Delta who often killed naval ratings and officers, Adeyeye said in his presentation.
The Niger Delta has become increasingly anarchic since early 2006, when militants alleging neglect by successive governments launched a wave of attacks on the oil industry and kidnappings of oil workers to press for local control of oil revenues.
The violence spiralled out of control as bunkerers, armed robbers and ransom seekers all sought to take advantage of the breakdown in law and order. More than 200 foreigners have been abducted, mostly for money, and thousands of others have fled the region.
Nigeria's oil output is down by about 20 percent because of the violence.
Exxon Mobil Profits Slip (Washington Post)
Exxon Mobil profit slipped about 1 percent in the second quarter, disappointing analysts as higher exploration and production costs, and lower oil and gas production offset big earnings in the refining and marketing end of the business.
Though the $10.26 billion in profit was the fourth-largest quarterly profit for a public company in U.S. history, Exxon's stock fell $4.56 a share, or 4.9 percent, to $88.23 a share. The company's shares are still up 15 percent this year. Earnings per share were $1.83, up from $1.72, after $7 billion in share buybacks, but earnings fell short of analysts' estimates.
Revenue was $98.35 billion, down from $99.03 billion.
"Exxon obviously was a big disappointment because they spoiled us" with consistent profit gains, said Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Sons. He compared the company to New York Yankees star third baseman Alex Rodriguez. "When A-Rod strikes out, people say, 'My God' in disappointment because he's hitting a home run every other time," Gheit said.
Exxon's results capped a week of big profits reported by most of the world's largest oil companies. Thanks to a series of refinery fires, breakdowns and maintenance shutdowns, combined with low industry inventories of refined products, profit margins in the refining and marketing end of the business soared. Though U.S. refining output at Exxon dropped by 128,000 barrels a day, compared with the second quarter of 2006, refining and marketing profit jumped 37 percent. Refining and marketing profit also rose 42 percent at Royal Dutch Shell Group and 38 percent at ConocoPhillips Co.
The quarterly reports also showed signs that the industry faces spiraling costs and political problems getting access to oil prospects as existing fields gradually decline.
ConocoPhillips said Wednesday that it took a $4.5 billion write-off in the second quarter for Venezuelan operations taken over by the Caracas government. Exxon said that its output in West Africa was trimmed 9 percent because of quotas from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. And Royal Dutch Shell, which gave in to pressure to sell half its stake in a Sakhalin Island oil project to Russia's Gazprom last quarter, said that 195,000 barrels a day of its Niger delta oil production has been curtailed because of insurgent attacks.
This comes amid gradual declines in output from aging fields. For example, Conoco's production for the quarter averaged 1.9 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, down from 2.1 million. The company blamed the decrease on normal field declines, planned maintenance in the North SeaDubai. Its exit from Venezuela will cut production further in the third quarter, the company said. and its decision to leave
Companies are turning to new ways to keep production up. Royal Dutch Shell said that it managed to limit its production decline to 2.3 percent thanks to unconventional projects such as oil sands in Canada and a gas-to-liquids venture in Qatar.
Exxon said that it would explore for oil in Madagascar and New Zealand, not usually considered among the world's best prospects. It also said yesterday that it had drilled the longest well ever, more than seven miles, to reach a subsea oil field on Russia's Pacific coast.
Royal Dutch Shell Chairman Jeroen van der Veer yesterday would not rule out a natural gas development project in Iran, despite pressure from the U.S. government for European firms to help isolate the Tehran regime. He said that the company would "take political considerations into account," but that it was still studying how to follow up on a tentative agreement it reached with Iran last year.
Gheit said that the big oil companies would have trouble matching the second-quarter results. He noted that in the past four weeks, profit margins at refineries had plunged about 50 percent. But production earnings should remain high thanks to high oil prices. The price of crude oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange neared an 11-month high before dropping to $74.95 a barrel yesterday.
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