Crude oil traded little changed after rising earlier as Nigerian militants continued attacks on oil installations in Africa’s largest crude producer. Militants in Nigeria said today they attacked the second well head at Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s Afremo offshore oil field. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said yesterday they attacked a Shell pipeline supplying an export terminal. “The market is seeing that the Nigerian situation isn’t as serious as initially thought and that the economic recovery will be slow,” said Johannes Benigni, managing director at JBC Energy GmbH, said by phone from Vienna. “There is a degree of realism that the lack of consumption is going to weigh on sentiment.” Crude oil for August delivery traded down 17 cents at $70.06 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange 1:47 a.m. London time. Earlier, it rose as much as $1.06, or 1.5 percent to $71.29. Shell’s offshore facility was blown up at about 11 p.m. yesterday, hours after an offer of an amnesty by President Umaru Yar’Adua. The attack was in response to “a punitive” raid by the military on the Agbeti community in the Delta state, the main oil-producing region. The platform had been shut since Feb. 28 following an attack on Shell’s Trans Escravos Pipeline, Precious Okolobo, Shell’s spokesman in Nigeria, said by phone. Military spokesman Colonel Rabe Abubakar said troops didn’t carry out any raids yesterday. Dollar Weakness “With a lot of oil removed from the market, weakness in the dollar has a greater influence in determining the short-term trend,” said Harry Tchilinguirian, a senior oil analyst at BNP Paribas SA, by phone. Brent crude oil for August settlement rose as much as $1.03, or 1.5 percent, to $70.81 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange. It traded up 9 cents at $69.87 a barrel at 1:40 p.m. in London. A falling dollar makes commodities such as oil and gold an attractive alternative investment. The dollar traded at $1.4085 versus the euro at 12:54 p.m. in London from $1.3988 yesterday. Oil prices have been supported and supply curbed since the re-emergence of militant activity in the Niger River delta, Nigeria’s main oil-producing region, in December 2005. MEND has stepped up a sabotage campaign in the area since a military offensive began last month. Fighters from the Nigerian group damaged the Bille-Krakrama pipeline, cutting supplies from Shell’s Cawthorne 1, 2 and 3 oil-pumping stations, MEND spokesman Jomo Gbomo said in an e- mail yesterday. A Shell spokeswoman confirmed an attack on a manifold on the pipeline and couldn’t say whether production was halted by the incident. Nigeria produces so-called sweet, or low-sulfur, crude oil that is prized by refiners because it yields a large amount of gasoline and diesel fuel when processed.

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