The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, on Wednesday indicated that but for the timely interventions of the government, first through back-channel consultations and then open dialogues with militants who resumed bombing of oil facilities in the Niger Delta in 2015, the country could have been crippled. Speaking through a podcast he sent out in Abuja, Kachikwu explained that at the height of the oil militancy, Nigeria’s oil production dropped to about 800,000 barrels per day (bpd), a production volume he said was inadequate to fund the national budget or investments in infrastructure. He stated that bombing of oil facilities in the region went on for a stretch of 10 months within which the integrity of the facilities were compromised. According to him, the government realised that if it failed to act fast, the militants would cripple the oil industry and Nigeria’s economy which […]