CAMP FIVE, Nigeria — From this small cluster of blue-roofed houses at the confluence of the Escravos River and Chanomi Creek, a militant named Government Ekpemupolo got rich.

Many oil and cargo vessels going to the port of Warri paid protection money to Mr. Ekpemupolo, according to Nigerian military officials, local militants, and employees of oil companies operating in the area. Mr. Ekpemupolo controlled Camp Five — a former construction-company site taken over by militants a few years ago. Those who didn’t pay were often accosted by militants, in speedboats mounted with machine guns, who would demand money or abduct their crews.

But an assault last month on a military convoy escorting an oil tanker provoked a counterattack that marked a new phase in the Niger Delta conflict.

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WARRI, Nigeria — U.S. oil major Chevron Corp. shut down 100,000 barrels a day of Nigerian crude-oil production Monday after an attack on one of its pipelines, as fighting between Nigeria’s military and militant groups in the southern delta region entered a second week.

Nigeria’s main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, took credit for the attack, which occurred in the Abiteye area of Delta state. It claimed that it had also attacked four other pipelines leading to Chevron’s oil tank farm in the region.

Monday’s incident marks the first major retaliation from MEND since a sustained offensive by the Nigerian military’s Joint Task Force began 10 days ago.

“We will continue our cat and mouse tactics with [the Nigerian military] until oil export ceases completely,” MEND said in an emailed statement.

Chevron confirmed the attack on Abiteye and the halt in production but didn’t comment on the other pipelines alleged to have been targeted. The incident is being investigated by the relevant stakeholders, a Chevron spokesman said in a statement.

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Nigeria’s movie industry is winning global attention, but DVD piracy may bring it down

LAGOS, Nigeria — Producer Paul Julius is confident that the tens of thousands of dollars he has spent producing the soap opera “Tomorrow’s Tears” will be recouped, no matter the electricity shortages, lack of investors or grease-palmed government officials hampering his shooting schedule.

Fighting to be heard over a steady stream of traffic and actors complaining about the lack of food, money and air conditioning, Mr. Julius explained the plot of his soap, which he hopes to sell to local TV stations. “I changed the subject from the normal stuff: blood, magic, stepmothers, etc.,” he said. “This is going to be about real-life issues.”

Mr. Julius is an up-and-coming player in Nigeria’s film and television industry, known as Nollywood, which has grown from its infancy in the 1980s into the one of the world’s biggest movie industries, but is facing some real-life issues of its own.

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LAGOS, Nigeria — A week-long offensive by the Nigerian army to destroy militant camps in the oil-rich Niger Delta continued Wednesday, a day after Italian oil major Eni SpA declared force majeure on 52,000 barrels per day of crude production from the country.

The fighting helped push oil prices higher, though they got the biggest lift from a U.S. government report that inventories were falling faster than expected. In late trading in New York Wednesday, U.S. benchmark crude was up $1.94 per barrel, or 3.23%, at $62.04.

The fighting is the latest in years of battles between militants on one side and oil companies and Nigeria’s security services on the other, though it had subsided somewhat since October. Occasional outbreaks since then had been brief and drew little attention from global crude markets after prices fell sharply from highs last summer.

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By Will Connors

LAGOS, Nigeria (Dow Jones)–The worst fighting in Nigeria’s oil-rich Delta region in eight months, which has seen the military use gunships and fighter jets, could represent a significant change in the government’s approach to stamping out a three-year-old insurgency that has disrupted nearly a quarter of Nigeria’s oil production and threatened the country’s already fragile economy.

In response to the hijacking of two oil service vessels last Wednesday, one operated by the Nigerian state-run oil company, the Nigerian military’s Joint Task Force, or JTF, began a series of attacks Friday on suspected militant camps using more than a dozen gunboats, several helicopter gunships and fighter jets.

The military claimed a number of victories last week, and claimed another militant camp had been destroyed early Monday.

The scale, coordination and likely cost of the military campaign is unlike any undertaken before in Nigeria’s effort to rid the Delta of militants, analysts say.

“The military spent the last 18 months getting together their ‘all-arms force’ for this kind of operation,” a security analyst said. “The federal government has had enough.”

Nigeria’s oil-dependent economy has been hit hard by the economic crisis as oil prices plummeted and foreign investors packed their bags. Domestic fuel shortages and embarrassing political corruption scandals have added to the pressure. But Nigeria’s most prominent and persistent headache, the Niger Delta, had experienced months of relative calm. No longer.

So far the fighting has been limited to western Delta state, where the two main international oil companies operating in the region, Chevron Corp. (CVX) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA), haven’t indicated any disruptions to supply, nor have they reported any staff evacuations.

A worker for an oil-service company who was stranded on a houseboat near the site of the fighting, however, said that Chevron employees who normally live on the houseboat while working had all been evacuated to the nearby Escravos camp or the town of Warri.

Much of the fighting has taken place near the massive Escravos terminal, home to several oil and gas projects, including a $6 billion gas-to-liquid joint venture between Chevron and the state-run Nigeria National Petroleum Corp. that would produce 34,000 barrels per day once completed.

The main militant group in the region, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, declared an “all-out war” last week and issued a statement Monday that saying it would block key water channels used by oil industry vessels.

“This means vessels now ply such routes at their risk,” the statement said.

MEND also claimed two attacks on pipelines over the weekend, both unconfirmed.

Shell said in a statement it is investigating the claims but didn’t elaborate. Chevron declined to comment on the security situation in the region.

ABUJA, Nigeria — Nigerian military helicopters and at least a dozen gunboats opened fire on a community festival in southern Delta state Friday where militant fighters were suspected to be, said a member of Nigeria’s most prominent militant group and a local politician.

The group, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, said in an emailed statement that it is “declaring an all out war in the region” and restated a warning for all oil companies operating in the area to evacuate by midnight tonight.

“They came with about 12 gunboats and military helicopters,” a MEND member from the southern city of Warri said by phone Friday. “They tried to shoot at the camp and into some other communities. They’ve left now and we’re not sure when they’re coming back. The shooting was very tough.”

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ABUJA, Nigeria – After months of relative quiet, Nigeria’s most prominent, and most media-savvy, militant group has launched a fresh series of attacks against military patrols, petroleum infrastructure and oil workers.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, an amorphous collection of militants in the oil-rich Niger Delta, has claimed in the past two days to have sunk five military gunboats, injured at least two soldiers and seized two oil-service vessels, kidnapping both crews.

Col. Rabe Abubakar, spokesman for the Nigerian military’s Joint Task Force operating in the Delta, denied that gunboats had been attacked. But the command confirmed Thursday that the MV Spirit, a vessel subcontracted from the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., was hijacked Wednesday on its way to the southern port city of Warri. Its 15-man crew was kidnapped, the military confirmed.

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ABUJA, Nigeria — Thousands of Nigerian workers marched through downtown Lagos on Wednesday, protesting a proposed end to fuel subsidies and calling for electoral reforms and an increase in the minimum wage in Africa’s most populous country.

In the past month, fuel shortages — caused by a dispute between independent fuel marketers and the government — have triggered long lines at gas stations. Those lines and black-market fuel of dubious quality and at twice the normal price have raised public-transportation fares. With the power supply also inadequate, the fuel shortages have made operating generator-dependent businesses difficult.

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photo: AFP

LAGOS, Nigeria — Officials here are embarking on a costly drive to revamp Nigeria’s power sector as the government struggles to keep the lights on.

After months of delays and political maneuverings, the government of Africa’s largest oil producer approved this month a plan to allocate over $5 billion in emergency funding to repair its power sector. The money is slated to come from the country’s excess crude-oil account. It’s a huge outlay, accounting for some 40% of the rainy-day fund’s current value of $13.5 billion.

The new spending program underscores a realization among top officials about the extent of Nigeria’s power problems. Many analysts consider the lack of reliable power the biggest impediment to economic growth in Nigeria — bigger even than the estimated annual loss of billions of dollars in oil revenues to smuggling and corruption.

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Part 5 of 5 of my series for Slate

LAGOS, Nigeria—Did you ever wonder what happened to that clunky 12-inch television you used to watch Seinfeld on? Or to that old CD player you wore out in the ’90s listening to Pearl Jam and P.M. Dawn? There’s a decent chance it ended up here, on the western outskirts of Lagos, in West Africa’s biggest electronics market, Alaba International.

Franklin Azubuike wants you to know that your old appliances are doing fine. And, by the way, thank you.

According to Azubuike, public affairs officer for the Alaba secretariat, the market’s 3,000 shops sell “anything electronic within the imagination of any man” to more than 300,000 people every single day. During the holiday season, the numbers are much, much higher.

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