There’s been a further drop in Nigeria’s daily oil production. That’s because unidentified attackers blew up a major pipeline in the Niger Delta Friday belonging to the Italian oil company Agip.

Published reports say that reduced production by about 65-thousand barrels a day, lowering the daily output to about 630-thousand barrels a day.

Andrew Hayman is an oil industry analyst for the IHS Energy consulting firm.  From Geneva, he spoke to English to Africa reporter Joe De Capua about the latest attack against a western oil company in Nigeria.

He says, “It’s certainly a serious development and there’s no sign yet that these are going to stop. We’ve seen over this last weekend that the Italian company Agip has had a pipeline blown up and another 65,000 barrels per day of production shut in or stopped, making a total of something like 600,000 barrels per day out of a national production of two and a half million barrels per day...So that’s a large portion of national revenue that’s being closed in. And one wonders how long the government in Abuja is going to accept the situation. It seems to me that the local youths who are doing this, who appear to be well armed and pretty dangerous are getting emboldened by these steps that they’re taking. And one really wonders how long this is going to go on.” 

Hayman says there are indications that oil companies in the delta are becoming nervous about continuing doing business there.