Oil giants are likely to continue investing billions of dollars in Nigeria, even though a rash of recent militia attacks and kidnappings could mean violence is on the rise.

The past two months have seen militias blow up oil pipelines and launch attacks on two oil platforms run by Nigeria's main crude producer Royal Dutch Shell. Armed gangs also robbed two oil companies last week, making their getaway in speedboats.

Four foreign oil workers were kidnapped and held for nearly three weeks until their release Monday. It was the second-longest kidnapping during over a decade of unrest in the Niger delta area, where poor local communities complain they get little benefit from the oil riches flowing from their land.

Much of the violence, though, appears less political than criminal. Gangs who tap into pipelines steal tens of thousands of barrels a crude a day. The oil thieves may be getting bolder as their illicit wealth allows them to buy more and more weapons.

Rights campaigner Demieari Von Kemedi in the delta city of Port Harcourt says top Nigerian power brokers and security forces collaborate with the oil thieves. Although the Nigerian government has denied allegations of collaboration, two top navy officials were court-martialed last year for involvement in oil theft.

Another reason for the recent upsurge in attacks may be reaction to renewed government determination to quell unrest. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has declared that "stability will be returned to the oil region." The arrest in September on treason charges of Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, the delta's most prominent militia leader, marked the start of a new crackdown on breakaway groups. Dokubo-Asari's campaign for independence for the over 8 million Ijaws that dominate the Niger delta is fueled in part by complaints that southerners see too little benefit from oil.

Another prominent Ijaw, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, also was recently jailed. Alamieyeseigha is a former Bayelsa state governor who fled money laundering charges in Britain in November before being arrested in Nigeria. Alamieyeseigha is a member of Obasanjo's ruling party, but had increasingly found himself at odds with the president over demands that the Ijaw get a greater share of oil revenues.

Dokubo-Asari and Alamieyeseigha both were seen as conduits of funds to militant groups. Their arrests may have dried up the flow of cash, angering militants.

The recent attacks forced Shell to shut down nearly 10 percent of the OPEC member nation's 2.5 million barrels-per-day oil output and evacuate over 300 workers. However, company spokesman Andy Corrigan said that Shell "expects to continue to be a major player in Nigeria in the years to come." Unrest here, together with worries over the nuclear standoff in Iran, have been pressuring world oil prices upward. At a time of high prices and diminishing reserves, Nigerian oil blocks remain attractive, said Antony Goldman, Africa analyst at London-based oil consultancy Clearwater Research.

"Nigeria, for all its difficulties, offers quite a bit," Goldman said, citing the country's expanding oil production capacity and the rapid growth of the natural gas industry.

Nigeria has the world's seventh largest proven reserves of natural gas. It is the fifth largest provider of crude to the United States.

The major investments now are in deep offshore fields, considered much safer than the onshore facilities currently accounting for the bulk of Nigeria's oil. The newer projects are much further from the coast and harder for militants to reach.

Multi-billion-dollar investments by Anglo-Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil of the United States and others are likely to raise oil exports from just under 2.5 million barrels per day now to over 3 million by mid-2007, security conditions permitting, Goldman said.

The Nigerian government aims to increase oil production to 4 million barrels per day by 2010.

Nontraditional partners, including China and India, have been striking huge deals in Nigeria's petroleum sector. Earlier this month, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation announced a US$2.27 billion acquisition of a share in an oil block.

Chronic poverty and oil pollution have stoked the delta's regular violence over the past decade. Peaceful dialogue took a blow in 1995, when writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other activists from his Ogoni tribe were executed under the brutal regime of the late dictator Gen. Sani Abacha. They were hanged for the murder of four political rivals, but Saro-Wiwa's supporters say he was really targeted because he led protests against environmental damage by Shell.

Since then, there have been countless local community protests.

Abel Oshevire, a spokesman for the regional Delta state government, says that local authorities are trying to find a permanent solution by tackling key issues such as poverty and education. But the regional government needs to be given control of oil resources, and to have much more money, says Oshevire.

Critics say that, with 13 percent of oil revenues flowing back to them, oil-producing states have plenty of money, but that governors squander or steal it.

Rights campaigner Von Kemedi said he is worried the military may eventually step in. On previous occasions, the army has responded to the killing of security forces or government officials with "punitive raids," in which villages are razed and dozens, even hundreds, massacred. Concern for the hostages most likely prevented a major crackdown this time around

Oil Company Attacks Continue

Armed men stormed the headquarters of a South Korean oil services company in Nigeria's delta region and stole 40 million naira ($US307,000) in the latest attack on foreign firms.

There were no casualties.

The raid came five days after nine men were killed during a suspected armed robbery at the delta headquarters of an Italian oil company, Agip.

RADIO NEW ZEALAND

Bulgarian Hostage Phones Wife

Milko Nichev, the Bulgarian man who spent about three weeks in the hands of Nigerian militants, has called his wife over the phone to tell her the danger has passed.

Alexandra Nichev received the call at 7:20 a.m. Bulgarian time, finding out that Milko was freed two hours before that.

The man told her he was safe and sound, expecting to be home within five or six days, the state radio BNR reported.

Nichev and three other foreign oild workers - Honduran Harry Ebanks, American Patrick Landry, and Briton Nigel Watson-Clark - were kidnapped in Nigeria on January 12.

At the time of the attack they were working on a ship servicing an oilfield, located a few miles off the coast of the southern Niger Delta and operated by Royal Dutch Shell.

The news on the hostages' release came despite earlier reports that the Nigerian militants holding four hostages did not plan to release them any time soon. They also threatened a second wave of violence.

Negotiators from Nigerian government have held talks on the release of the four abducted nationals.

According to Bulgarian officials, no ransom has been paid. SOFIA NEWS AGENCY

The Rule of Law

This is Part II of a three part series:

THE RULE OF LAW (R) Asari

Flying from Lagos to Paris Saturday night, I enjoyed the company of a very personable and articulate legal practitioner, the name Nigerians use for what Americans call “attorneys” and the British term “barristers.” She answered my questions about her country’s politics, ethnic divisions, crisis in the Niger Delta, unemployment and more. My final question I asked her was, “In your mind, what is the single biggest problem facing Nigeria today.” She answered very simply, and not unexpectedly, “The rule of law.”

When asked to expound on this belief, she told me the rule of law is being attacked from every side in Nigeria. The country has a president who wants to rewrite the Constitution to fit his own desires and ideas of the direction in which Nigeria needs to move. There are politicians who bend and break the law daily to fill their pockets and the bank accounts of their constituency. Lawlessness by terroristic militant rebel groups and an increase in violent crime add to the assault taking place on the rule of law. My new friend wonders whether it can stand the strain of so many entities trying to pull it apart.

One of the goal of the rebels who kidnapped four foreign oil field works on January 11, was to secure the freedom of a prominent and currently incarcerated Niger Delta militia leader. Moujahid Dokubo-Asari came to the attention of the Nigerian public when he led an uprising of ethnic Ijaw youth demanding local control for oil resources in their region. Dobuko-Asari has become a hero to his tribe’s disposed and largely unemployed youth, who already felt deprived of oil wealth by what they see as an alliance between the foreign oil companies and successive federal governments led by heads of state who were not sensitive to their plight.

Some observers believe it was Dobuko-Asari’s 2005 threat to target oil companies that helped drive global oil prices past the $50 mark. However,, members of his Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF) called off the threat after their leader met with Nigeria’s President Obasanjo and agreed to a truce. They even surrendered their arms for money.

But Asari was arrested last September and charged with treason after he declared in a newspaper interview that he would fight for the disintegration of the country. Militants are also calling for the release from custody of Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, the ousted governor of the only predominantly Ijaw state, Bayelsa. The governor lost his job and is being held because of charges of corruption. He was arrested last September in Great Britain and charged with money laudering.

The hapless governor jumped bail in the UK last November and was arrested by Nigerian security forces three weeks later after the state’s legislature impeached him.

The militants insist Obasanjo is persecuting the two men for opposing the president’s apparent bid for an unconstitutional third term and for any loss of oil revenue their actions have caused. They deny wanting money, but do say they want the oil riches obtained from their region to stay in the region.

Tomorrow: Reaction of the oil industry.

Freedom

I just awoke from a long sleep after an even longer trip home. Here is some good news that happened while I was traveling and sleeping:

Four foreign oil workers were released Monday after being held hostage for more than two weeks by a militia demanding that residents in volatile southern Nigeria benefit more from its energy wealth.

The hostages - including one American - were released to a team of negotiators at an undisclosed town in the oil-rich but volatile Niger delta region, said Nelson Azabolanari, commissioner for information in Bayelsa state.

He said they would be flown to the Nigerian capital Abuja, where President Olusegun Obasanjo planned to hand them over to their respective embassies himself.

The oil workers - Louisiana native Patrick Landry, Briton Nigel Watson-Clark, Bulgarian Milko Nichev and Honduran Harry Ebanks - were abducted by armed gunmen at Shell's offshore EA oil rig in the Niger delta on Jan. 11.

"We are very happy that they have been released safely," said Graeme Bannatyne, spokesman for the British High Commission in Nigeria.

The previously unknown militia group who abducted them, the Movement for the Emancipation of the People of the Niger Delta, initially said they would only release them if the government freed two detained leaders of their ethnic Ijaw group and if Shell paid local communities $1.5 billion to compensate for environmental pollution.

The hostages were released, however, without the conditions being met.

The imprisoned Ijaws are Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, the delta's most prominent militia leader, and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, a former Bayelsa state governor who fled money laundering charges in Britain in November before being arrested in Nigeria.

A close aide to Dokubo-Asari, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals or arrest by authorities, said the militants released the hostages after an appeal from Dokubo-Asari to avoid "any problems with the international community." His group, the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, denies any involvement in the kidnappings.

Nigeria is Africa's leading oil exporter and the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports. The country produces about 2.5 million barrels a day.

But oil also is a source of unrest in the southern part of the country. Violence, hostage-taking and sabotage of oil operations have been common in the Niger delta in the past 15 years amid demands by the region's impoverished communities for a greater share of the oil revenue flowing from their land.

Attacks in recent weeks had cut Nigeria's daily oil exports by nearly 10 percent.

Shell workers running the EA platform have been taken hostage on two previous occasions in the past year over a dispute with neighboring communities, who accuse the company of reneging on a promise to undertake development projects for their region.

A Croatian was seized in December 2004 and freed days later. Two Germans and four Nigerian oil workers were similarly taken hostage in June and later freed.

The latest hostage crisis was Nigeria's second longest, surpassed only by the month long detention of two foreign helicopter pilots in 2002.