LONDON: Oil companies and even Nigerian officials are losing faith in a deal anytime soon with militants who have slashed the nation’s oil output, casting doubt on a production recovery in what is typically Africa’s largest oil exporter.

In the six months since the first major attack on Nigeria’s oil — a sophisticated bombing of the subsea Forcados pipeline — dozens of attacks have pushed outages to more than 700,000 bpd, the highest in seven years.

Talk in the country has shifted from ceasefire optimism, and oil companies’ assurances that repairs were underway, to hedged comments from the government and radio silence from oil majors.

“People are giving up in the short term,” one oil industry source told Reuters of a resumption in exports of key Nigerian grades such as Forcados or Qua Iboe, adding that you “can’t get anything” out of the majors, including Shell, Chevron , ExxonMobil or ENI, about when the oil might come back.

Shell declined to comment, while the other companies did not immediately responded to a request for comment.

In June, Nigerian government officials said privately it had a ceasefire with militants. But pessimism crept in, with even Oil Minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu telling journalists this week “we are talking but (it) is not an easy thing,” and “we need a ceasefire” — a contrast to the belief that a ceasefire was underway.

The problems reflect deep-seated issues in the Niger Delta, which produces the bulk of oil but whose local communities complain of pollution, a lack of opportunities and what they say is an insufficient share of petro dollars. These problems are compounded by an economic crisis and a government battle with Boko Haram militants in the north.

A group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers claimed the bulk of them, announcing strikes on Twitter even before oil majors themselves knew their remote pipelines had been hit. Twitter shut the group’s account, but sources said the Avengers have extensive knowledge of oil sites, and follow the media closely to track companies’ actions.

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2016