Conflict in the Niger Delta Jonathan’s defeat in the March 2015 elections, the amnesty program seems likely to end in December 2015 and with patronage to former militant leaders terminated, local discontent is deepening. A February 2016 explosion in a pipeline operated by Shell Petroleum Development Corporation, a Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary to the Shell Forcados export terminal halted both production and imports. Speculation centered on militants using divers. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, the minister of state for petroleum and the head of Nigeria’s oil company, said Nigerian production was down 300,000 barrels a day as a result. On May 11 Shell closed its Bonny oil
Brass River at Yenagoa and flows south to discharge into the Gulf of Guinea. The tidal flats of the river have a reticulate drainage pattern, with higher elevation at the edges of the flats than at the center. Discharge varies depending on the season and state of the tide: An 1893 navigation guide says of the river, The mouth of the river is protected by a sand bar, which in 1893 could not be crossed by vessels with more than draft. Akassa creek, inland from the mouth of the river, provided a route from the Brass river to the Nun river for