froggy is correct. The ship was close to Onne Port just south of Port Harcourt. MEND claimed responsibility, saying that they had used an explosive device. This was later denied by Mr Sotoyi Etomi, GM of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA). In retaliation for this and to supposedly prove that they had actually carried out the tanker explosion, MEND attacked the GMs armed convoy on Monday and the driver of the pilot vehicle was killed.
The petrol tanker explosion at Eleme junction, Port Harcourt just after midnight last Saturday. It resulted in the deaths of at least 21 people and 14 cars were destroyed and a number of small shops razed to the ground. There were reports that the vehicle crashed because it was being chased by the police, but the police deny this.
Meanwhile, there's still complete silence about the Agbami contract, despite both Bristow and CHC being convinced they have it - or are they now?
I hear rumors that SPDC may be pulling out of Nigeria or considerably downsizing their onshore operations as a result of the civil disruption in the swamp areas having made it impossibly to operate profitably there. Has anyone else out here heard about this? If true it will obviously have quite an impact on the Bristow operations for Shell. Even though SPDC own the EC155s Bristow have quite a few people working for them.
However, anyone thinking of leaving Bristow for CHC would be well advised to consider that whilst all our nice flashy new helicopters and equipment in CHC looks good, there's a price to be paid for that in terms of profitability and investors will only take so much in the way of falling earnings. At the moment Bristow has a book value of $30.30 compared with CHCs 7.72, an earnings per share of 3.12 compared with 1.33 and a P/E ratio of 33.43 compared with 17.90. CHC gas had pretty tepid quarterly results for a while now and there are quite a few analysts predicting that if this continues it will soon be split up and parts sold off. But analysts frequently get things completely wrong don't they?
