Lagos (Platts)--12Apr2010/624 am EDT/1024 GMT

Nigeria's security agencies have discovered fresh plans for attacks on the country's oil and gas production facilities, a military spokesman said Monday.

"We have intelligence reports that some people are plotting an attack on the nation's oil and gas infrastructure," said Timothy Antigha, a spokesman for the country's Joint Task Force, the special military unit operating in the country's oil-rich Niger Delta region.

"We are warning all those behind the plot, whether ex-militants or emerging militants, that because the government has given an amnesty plan, does not mean that the JTF has lost its capability as a military outfit," Antigha told Platts.

Attacks by militants in the Niger Delta crippled Nigeria's oil output between 2006 and 2009, restricting production from the OPEC member to just a third of its 3.2 million b/d installed capacity.

The government granted an amnesty to former rebels last year, but progress in implementing post-amnesty programs including training and provision of jobs has been slow.

The country's main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, last month bombed a venue in which post-amnesty talks were being held in the oil city Warri. MEND has threatened an all-out war on the nation's oil industry.

On Friday, gunmen kidnapped four foreigners in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt.

A coalition of splinter militant groups, named the Joint Revolutionary Council, has in the last three months carried out attacks on oil facilities, and has demanded that foreign oil companies vacate the Niger Delta region.

Acting President Goodluck Jonathan, who is trying to get the amnesty program back on track, has urged community leaders to help check the resurgent violence.

--Staff, newsdesk@platts.com