LAGOS: A truce among warring ethnic groups in Nigeria’s oil-producing Delta region appears to be holding, but unless long-running grievances there are resolved, violence is bound to erupt again and again, analysts say.

More than 800,000 barrels per day (bpd), nearly 40 per cent of the West African nation’s oil output, has been shut down since mid-March when multinational oil companies withdrew their workers because of fighting between Ijaw and Itsekiri militias.

ChevronTexaco, one of the firms hit hardest by the crisis, said on Friday it was re-starting production but could give no timeframe for full operations in the area.

Nigerian analysts say while resentment runs deep among Niger Delta communities who are demanding a greater share of Nigeria’s oil wealth derived from their communities, inter-ethnic rivalries pose an equally serious threat to peace.

“The current crisis has more to do with representation of the various groups in the state and national assemblies than the perceived marginalization of the oil communities,” said Oscar Ede, a writer on the Niger Delta issues.

The Ijaw argue that the carve-up of wards for general elections set to begin next week has given them less electoral representation than the Itsekiri in the western Delta oil hub of Warri, long a subject of rival claims by the two ethnic groups.

“This has been the crux of the Warri southwest council troubles,” the Ijaw pressure group FNDIC said in an open letter to Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Friday.

Royal Dutch Shell, Nigeria’s biggest oil producer, and ChevronTexaco, have both welcomed what they say are signs of gradual calm in the Delta. But Shell has yet to set a date for re-starting production in the western Niger Delta.

While oil firms were not particularly targeted in the latest crisis, they will always be caught in the crossfire of any fighting between rival groups in the creeks where their installations are the main landmarks.

Oil communities have accused successive governments of neglecting their demands for greater access to oil revenues in the form of amenities and jobs for local people.

MOUNTING FURY: Despite the wealth generated there, the communities remain some of the poorest in the world, with few basic amenities.