The Niger Delta Avengers said on Wednesday that its next round of attacks targeting deep water operations would be bloody.

Nigeria is a member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that has exemption from its effort to balance an oversupplied market with coordinated production cuts. Nigeria got the exemption because it needs oil revenue to support national security efforts.

Last November, the long-dormant group said a militant cease-fire was over and the next campaign would be “brutish, brutal and bloody.”

In its latest message, the militant group said it would target offshore installations in its “most deadly” campaign yet. In a warning to French energy company Total, the NDA said it was tracking the movement of the Egina floating production, storage and offloading vessel.

“We mean it when we say they, the oil installations, shall dance to the sound of the fury of the Niger Delta Avengers,” the group said in a statement. “Good a thing the ocean is wide enough to accommodate as many wreck as possible.”

It warned specifically that it was aiming to bring down an Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) unit off the Nigeria coast. Total said its Egina vessel was about 130 kilometres off the coast of Nigeria in waters about two kilometres deep. With a start date in 2018, the French supermajor said it was expecting a production rate of around 200,000 barrels per day

Nigeria’s economy emerged from recession in the second quarter of last year and third quarter growth of 1.4 percent year-over-year was its fastest in nearly two years. Total production in November, the last full month for which OPEC published data, was 1.8 million barrels per day.

The last time the Avengers took credit for an attack of note was during the second week of November 2016 when it said its rebel forces attacked an export pipeline controlled in part by a Shell subsidiary that has the capacity to carry as much as 300,000 barrels per day.

In explaining last November's call to arms, the Avengers said it stood down because of the intervention of “overzealous and over-patriotic elders.” Spokesman Murdoch Agbinibo said the group was now prepared for the “brutal out pour of our wrath.” (UPI)

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