those in speedboats and those in power.
But this time, “the Boys” did not cooperate. The January 2006 attacks were the beginning of a wave of bloody intimidation, kidnappings, and murder. Violence in Nigeria became a key factor in the world oil market. “The balance of world oil supply and demand has become so precarious,” U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan warned in June 2006, “that even small acts of sabotage or local insurrections have a significant impact on prices.” The dense swamps and intricate network of creeks and waterways made it easy for MEND and such similar organizations as the Martyrs Brigade to attack and then fade back into the jungle—and they did so with impunity. One night shortly after the presidential election in 2007 of Nigeria, the family home in the Delta of Goodluck Jonathan, the new vice president (and now Nigeria’s president), was burned to the ground by one of the gangs. It was meant as a demonstration of power—and as a warning.11
In the face of constant violence in the Delta and the killing and kidnapping of their workers, the international oil companies repeatedly evacuated their employees, closed down facilities, and declared force majeure on shipments. Plans for substantial expansion of capacity were shelved. As it was, without physical security, the oil could not flow. At some points, upward of one million barrels per day—40 percent of Nigeria’s total output—was shut in and lost to the world market. That deficit was one of the key factors in the rise of prices. And it was certainly a loss for the United States, for which Nigeria had just moved up in the rankings to become its third-largest source of imported oil.
NATURAL DISASTER
Somewhere above the west coast of Africa, unseen and unnoticed on a cloudless day, solar radiation penetrated the earth’s atmosphere and struck an expanse of surface of the southern Atlantic. The sun’s rays transferred their energy to an enormous number of water molecules, transforming liquid into gas and sending these molecules back into the sky as a gaseous vapor. Winds off the dry Sahara and the power of the earth’s rotation pushed these clouds of water, now coalescing into large bands of tropical moisture, westward, toward the American continent.
No one took notice until August 13, 2005, when a forecaster at the National Hurricane Center in Miami identified a mass of clouds over the tropical Atlantic, 1,800 miles east of Barbados. Ten days later, those same clouds once again caught the attention of the National Hurricane Center as they merged with another tropical storm and began to slowly churn. On Thursday morning, August 25, what had now been christened Hurricane Katrina made landfall near Miami Beach but without heavy devastation. The storm gained scope as it passed into the Gulf of Mexico.
By August 28, it had been transformed into a huge storm, a frighteningly ominous black mass, sprawling across the map—from the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico to the southern United States. With winds as powerful as an EF4 tornado, Katrina was already one of the most powerful storms ever recorded by the National Oceanic and Aeronautics Administration.
America’s largest energy complex is in and around the Gulf of Mexico, and it was right in the bull’s-eye. Over more than six decades, thousands of oil and gas production platforms had been built offshore, in both shallow waters, within sight of shore, and deepwater far out at sea. At the time, almost 30 percent of U.S. domestic oil production and 20 percent of natural gas production came from the Outer Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico. Almost a third of the country’s entire refining capacity—which turns the crude into gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, and other products—stretches along the shores of the Gulf.
Now, with Katrina approaching, the entire offshore industry went into emergency mode. Workers rushed to shut in the wells, secure the platforms, and activate automatic systems; they then hurriedly climbed into helicopters and raced the increasingly powerful winds back to shore.
As winds reached a peak strength near 175 miles per hour, Katrina hit the offshore energy complex and then slammed with devastating force and surging seas along the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama coasts, blowing down buildings, washing away homes, overturning cars, ripping out power lines, flooding the entire region, and forcing 1.3 million to flee as temporary refugees.12
What ensued was a human tragedy of far-reaching proportions. The worst violence was reserved for New Orleans, where the levies were breached, opening the way for the waters to flood into streets and homes