Navy says suspected militants blast pipeline

The main pipeline supplying natural gas to Nigeria's biggest power station has been ruptured by explosives planted by suspected ethnic Ijaw militants, the navy said on Monday. The pipeline which was blasted on Saturday at the village of Ajama, near the oil town of Warri in the oil-rich Niger Delta, supplies gas from transnational ChevronTexaco's Escravos gas plant to the Egbin thermal power station, near Nigeria's biggest city, Lagos. No one has claimed responsibility for the blast, the second in two months in the volatile oil region targetting a key pipeline. "We suspect the Ijaw youths did it," Shinebi Hungiapuko, navy spokesman, told IRIN. Bello Oboko, a leader of the militant Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities, denied any responsibility for the blast. He accused the military of carrying out some military raids in the area where the pipeline was damaged during the weekend, suggesting troops may have ruptured it unwittingly. In April a major pipeline supplying crude oil from Escravos to refineries in Warri and the northern city of Kaduna were similarly blasted with explosives. The previous month armed Ijaw militants aggrieved over the distribution of electoral wards they said favoured their Itsekiri rivals, engaged government troops in gunbattles. More than 100 people were killed in two weeks of violence. The government has responded with a massive deployment of troops in the region that produces most of Nigeria's oil. But activists in the impoverished region accuse President Olusegun Obasanjo's government of ignoring their plight and denying them access to the oil wealth produced on their land. [ENDS]