Michael Hill

Some of you may have heard, and others may not have heard. Michael Hill, the father of the little girl, Margaret, who was kidnapped in July, has died of a heart attack. I'm sure you don't need to read the news story to have your own opinions on what might have triggered his heart attack...

Margaret returns home

Margaret Hill has been returned to her parents. Was a ransom paid? Who knows.

Why?

3 year-old girl kidnapped for ransom in Port-Harcourt.

MEND on CNN

CNN has been running a piece by its man in Africa, Jeff Koinange, where he visits the MEND rebels in the Niger Delta. After the piece had run, Sebastian Junger, who wrote the Vanity Fair piece, appeared on Anderson Cooper 360 to talk about his experiences. I've just come off a night shift and haven't got the energy to comment on the story. There were one or two red flags, so I actually called CNN in Atlanta to put them straight. Still, read and watch.

Blood and oil in the creeks

The new issue (February) of Vanity Fair has a monumental article on militants in the Niger Delta. Dammie, thanks for the heads up. Sebastian Junger paints a picture filled with colour, light, shade, pain, and anger:

On June 23, 2005, a group of high-ranking government officials were convened in a ballroom of the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C., to respond to a simulated crisis in the global oil supply. The event was called "Oil ShockWave," and it was organized by public-interest groups concerned with energy policy and national security. Among those seated beneath a wall-size map of the world were two former heads of the C.I.A., the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The scenario they were handed was this:

Civil conflict breaks out in northern Nigeria—an area rife with Islamic militancy and religious violence—and the Nigerian Army is forced to intervene. The situation deteriorates, and international oil companies decide to end operations in the oil-rich Niger River delta, resulting in a loss of 800,000 barrels a day on the world market. Since Nigerian oil is classified as "light sweet crude," meaning that it requires very little refining, this makes it a particularly painful loss to the American market. Concurrently, in this scenario, a cold wave sweeping across the Northern Hemisphere boosts global demand by 800,000 barrels a day. Because global oil production is already functioning at close to maximum capacity (around 84 million barrels a day), small disruptions in supply shudder through the system very quickly. A net deficit of almost two million barrels a day is a significant shock to the market, and the price of a barrel of oil rapidly goes to more than $80. Read more...

Unreported World

Unreported World just aired. I haven't got very much to say except, Nigeria is probably doomed. Stark poverty which makes a family want to give their child away, pollution which turns beautiful creeks in rivers of crude oil, the arrogance of a governor (Odili) who drinks a $200 bottle Cristal with a journalist without a hint of irony, and an articulate, dynamic, unfortunate people bearing the brunt of it. I'll see if I can put a copy of it online in the next few days. In the meantime, listen to the podcast.