By early July 2007, 700,000 barrels per day were shut (deferred) by growing political instability and insurgent attacks. Within the first three months of 2006, $1 billion in oil revenues had been lost and over 29 Nigerian military had been killed in the uprising. MEND claimed a goal of cutting Nigerian output by 30 per cent. Among MEND's demands were the release of two key Ijaw leaders but as their operations became more brazen and daring so did their political demands.

A spectacular escalation in violent attacks on oil installations and abduction of oil workers beginning in December 2005 and January-February 2006 by a shadowy and largely unknown militant group MEND (the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta), have thrown into dramatic relief the enormous fragility of the Nigeria's oil economy. But there has been another presence contributing to this volatility, namely the deepening conflicts across, indeed the increasing ungovernability of the oil fields of the Niger Delta in Nigeria. The volatility of world oil markets, and the grumbling of American consumers over rising gas and heating oil prices over the last year, has highlighted a number of key trends in world oil markets: the rapidly growing demand for oil by China and India, the questionable status of some of the mega-oilfields in the Gulf, the aggressive nationalism of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and President Ahmadinejad in Iran, and not least the spill-over effects of the Iraqi insurgency across the Gulf.

How to use night vision in insurgency