Fixed field assets are often located in remote areas, making them easier to attack and curtailing crucial government revenues. Once ignited, pipelines, processing plants and oil and gas wells can cause extensive damage to infrastructure and the immediate vicinity and often necessitate expensive clean-up operations. Nigerian and Libyan facilities have long been targets for anti-government militants, but security concerns are also emerging in Chadian oil fields and Mozambique’s nascent gas industry. Although militants have occasionally launched daring raids on deepwater fields far out to sea from the Niger Delta, sea-borne projects have largely been sheltered from the violence inflicted on onshore and shallow water wells, pipelines and processing plants in the Delta itself.
SOURCE: AFRICAN BUSINESS