However, although an attack against the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) facility on Bonny Island would have serious economic and political repercussions, the chances are slim that a militant group has the tactical ability to successfully pull one off.

This new threat against Bonny Island could be connected to the political maneuvering of Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo's rivals in the lead-up to the April 2007 presidential election. Attacks and other militant activity in the Delta serve Obasanjo's opposition by giving the impression that he cannot provide adequate security in the country. As Obasanjo becomes more distracted by the political maneuvering, he will have less time to resolve the outstanding issues in the Niger Delta, likely leading to further attacks in the region.

Attacks against oil workers and infrastructure eased in the Delta following the Nigerian army's Aug. 24 razing of a shantytown believed to be an operating base for militants and kidnap-for-ransom gangs. The lull ended Oct. 2, however, when at least 25 Nigerian workers from Royal Dutch/Shell were kidnapped and several army soldiers were killed during an attack against a supply barge in the country's Cawthorne Channel. A day later, 18 armed youth kidnapped five foreign workers from their ExxonMobil residential compound at Eket. The Bonny Island threat, then, is only the latest manifestation of the renewed militant activity.

Located 20 miles south of Port Harcourt, the NLNG facility has five production trains that can turn some 24 billion cubic meters per year of natural gas into LNG. A sixth train is scheduled to become operational in 2007. Except for perimeter guards, personnel at the facility are almost exclusively expatriates and highly qualified (and thus highly paid) Nigerian workers. The makeup of the personnel on the island greatly reduces the probability that militants would get assistance in planning or executing an attack. Nigerian workers are too well compensated to want to assist in any sort of operation against the facility.

A natural gas explosion, if the natural gas is in its nonliquid form, could create a tremendous fireball that likely would cause significant damage to certain parts of the facility. In its liquid form, however, natural gas is condensed to approximately 1,800 times its normal volume. An LNG explosion could be devastating, with the rapid decompression of the gas releasing a tremendous amount of energy. However, LNG liquefaction facilities such as NLNG condense natural gas into its liquid form largely on an as-needed basis, so there rarely is a significant amount of natural gas in a liquid state at any given time waiting around to be blown up.

Although it is surrounded by water with no causeway for land access, Bonny Island is not completely insulated from threat of attack. Militant groups such as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) have previously launched attacks by boat against offshore oil rigs. MEND, however, has not yet shown the ability to launch any kind of operation beyond kidnapping and sabotaging oil pipelines.

Launching an attack against Bonny Island could not easily be done. If the goal was to explode a natural gas storage tank, the tremendous size of the explosion would almost certainly make the attack a suicide mission. To date, there have been no suicide attacks of any kind in Nigeria. Getting to the island in force would require the attackers to arrive successfully in multiple boats. After landing, the attackers would need to penetrate the facility's perimeter, which is well guarded by security personnel who possess both the numbers and a skill level appropriate to protecting the multibillion-dollar facility.

Assuming that both initial stages of an attack were successful, the facility itself is massive. Hence, detailed knowledge of the layout would be needed to determine which precise tanks to hit in order to cause a massive blast. However, an explosion from a single storage tank would unlikely cause other tanks to explode. LNG facilities, like most petroleum facilities, are designed with storage tanks adequately spaced apart specifically to minimize the chances of a cascade explosion. In the event of an explosion at one tank, the shockwave and heat from the blast most likely would not be enough to cause a cascading explosion.

Although a militant attack against Bonny Island would have serious political and economic repercussions, it probably would not cause catastrophic damage to the operational capacity of the facilities. In the past, large-scale attacks against energy infrastructure were considered taboo because they would dry up the export money that keeps Nigeria going. That calculus has changed, and Nigeria's political world is locked in a bitter campaign with Obasanjo's bid to retain power. As Nigeria's presidential election draws near, threats and actual attacks in the Niger River Delta are likely to increase.