Militants blew up strategic gas and crude pipelines belonging to Shell and Agip on Saturday in an increasingly fierce campaign that has chopped Nigeria's oil production in half, militants and residents said. The Niger Delta Avengers has given the oil companies a May 31 deadline to leave Nigeria's southern, oil-producing Niger Delta. A new militant group, calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers, reported in social media that they had dynamited the trunkline linking the Dutch-British Shell company's Bonny terminal and the Brass export terminal of the Italian company Agip. The militants are also angry that the government is winding down a 2009 amnesty program that had paid 30,000 militants to guard installations they once attacked. This year's renewed campaign targeting the oil industry in the Niger Delta have ca8used Nigeria to lose its position as Africa's largest oil producer, with Angola having taken the leading role since March.

Source: ABC News May 28, 2016 19:12 UTC