An oil slick clots the bottom of mangroves in Bodo creek in Ogoniland, near Nigeria’s oil hub city of Port Harcourt December 4, 2012. 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 barrels per day (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. On Sunday, the Niger Delta Avengers militants, which have claimed several major pipeline attacks, said in a statement […]