Nigerian Oil Thieves Return to Decimate Output Hurting Shell

Nigeria’s oil thieves are back in action, sabotaging pipelines to rob Africa’s biggest crude producer of more than a 10th of its daily production.

So far this year, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and other oil companies have declared four force majeures, a legal clause that allows them to miss contracted deliveries due to circumstances beyond their control. Shell announced the latest today, on Bonny Light Crude exports, as the thefts threaten to outpace the worst year, 2009, at the height of the insurgency by militants in the Niger River Delta.