"The fact that we have influenced the price of world oil, no matter how little, and caught the attention of the foreign media indicates we are on the right track."
Jomo Gbomo (one of Nigeria's MEND spokespeople)Two years ago, I wrote about the development of a shadow OPEC (read for more, "A Shadow OPEC"). Basically, it was a description of how small groups of global guerrillas, using systems disruption, would increasingly set the price of oil. I've written about it extensively since them. That idea was picked up by the press with yesterday's Page One article in the Wall Street Journal by Chip Cummins (a citation from him would have been nice):
The list of people with big influence over the $2 trillion-a-year global oil market has long been an exclusive one, topped by Saudi princes and American presidents. This year, someone calling himself Jomo Gbomo emailed his way into the club. Since January, the obscure Nigerian rebel group that he claims to speak for has battled Nigeria's military, blown up oil facilities and kidnapped foreign oil workers. All the while, Mr. Gbomo (pronounced BO-mo) has fired off emails to the international media taking responsibility for the attacks or threatening new ones -- and often roiling global oil prices in the process.
The media-savvy guerrilla group's emergence as a market mover points to a mounting problem for the U.S. and other big oil consumers: maintaining energy security in an era of scarce oil resources and ever-longer supply lines. With today's tight oil markets, even small disruptions -- or the threat of them -- can jolt the world economy, leading to higher costs of gasoline, airline tickets and other goods for consumers everywhere... Now even Mr. Gbomo's small group, armed with little more than machine guns and an email account, has realized that it, too, can use oil as a weapon on the global stage.