No quarrel with oil companies in Nigeria, rebel chief says

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria (AFP) - The leader of rebels in Nigeria's Niger Delta, the hub of the country's oil wealth, where unrest sent world crude prices soaring this week, said his group had no quarrel with multinationals operating in the region.
"We have no problem with the oil companies as long as the federal government meets our demands," Mujahid Dokubo Asari, leader of the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF), told the media after he arrived back in the delta after signing a ceasefire deal with the government and a rival rebel group.
The rebels threatened earlier this week to go to war if their demands for a bigger slice of Nigeria's oil wealth, greater autonomy for the Ijaw people -- the delta's dominant tribe -- and a national debate on Nigeria's problems were not met.
Asari's NDPVF said on Monday it was giving oil multinationals and foreigners until Friday to leave the Niger Delta.
The warning sent oil futures soaring, and they burst through the crucial 50 dollar a barrel barrier Tuesday.
The following day, they came back down as Asari began talks in Abuja with the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Asari and Ateke Tom, leader of the rival Niger Delta Vigilante (NDV) group, both signed the ceasefire deal late Friday, in which they promised to disband all militias and militant groups and to "totally disarm", according to a statement from the president's office.
On Saturday Asari returned by private jet from the inland capital to Port Harcourt, the city in the southern Niger Delta considered Nigeria's oil capital, with many oil multinationals based there.
He told the 200 supporters and reporters who met him at the airport the talks with the government had been "cordial".
"Everything is under control," he said.
The Niger Delta accounts for the bulk of Nigeria's crude oil output of 2.3 million barrels per day. Africa's largest oil exporter, with proved reserves of some 27 billion barrels, Nigeria derives more than 95 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from oil.
But despite the wealth potential under their feet, most residents of the Niger Delta live in abject poverty and have benefitted little from the oil reserves in the region of creeks and mangrove swamps.