The organic emergence of terrorist groups, whose only connection to al Qaeda is through the media, shouldn’t come as a surprise. We will see this again and again. One reason is that in open source warfare, the barriers to entry are nearly zero. Anyone can participate. All you need to do in order to join, is to act.
Even if you are a dimbulb… But dimbulbs can do serious damage too. As many have pointed out, these clueless wannabes were caught by old-fashioned police work, not by Orwellian governmental monitoring. Since it was a solo operation, there is no food chain for police to work up to find the ringleaders. That is the nature of OSW.
More OSW. Chevron shuts down multiple operations in Nigeria due to attacks by insurgents. If Chevron is forced to keep them shut down for a while, or has to shut down more facilities, the price of oil will certainly rise.
There is an interesting phenomenon afoot: In Nigeria, in Iraq, and elsewhere, OSW has either intentionally or colaterally disrupted oil supply. In Iraq, this appears to have been with the collusion of a certain Texas oilman who shall remain nameless, for the purpose of short-term profits for the oil companies… However, this may have an unexpected beneficial effect: if the price of oil rises too high (and its availability becomes too uncertain), we may be forced to think about the alternatives we should already be thinking about.
I would bet that the oil companies’ goal is to keep the price of oil high, but not too high, to avoid exactly that from happening. But the OSW participants have an entirely different goal in mind, and they are not controllable by a corporate board. Their actions, combined with the oil companies’ greed, may tip the scales and help us break our oil habit.
Incidentally, Nigeria was the 6th largest exporter of oil in 2005. Iraq was 12th. Topping the list were Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway, and Iran. Only one of those is a secure friend of the U.S.