Oil com­pa­nies and even Niger­ian of­fi­cials are los­ing faith in a deal any­time soon with mil­i­tants who have slashed the na­tion's oil out­put, cast­ing doubt on a pro­duc­tion re­cov­ery in what is typ­i­cal­ly Africa's largest oil ex­porter.

In the six months since the first ma­jor at­tack on Nige­ria's oil–a so­phis­ti­cat­ed bomb­ing of the sub­sea For­ca­dos pipeline–dozens of at­tacks have pushed out­ages to more than 700,000 bar­rels per day (bpd), the high­est in sev­en years.

Talk in the coun­try has shift­ed from cease­fire op­ti­mism, and oil com­pa­nies' as­sur­ances that re­pairs were un­der­way, to hedged com­ments from the gov­ern­ment and ra­dio si­lence from oil ma­jors.

yes­ter­day, the Niger Delta Avengers mil­i­tants, which have claimed sev­er­al ma­jor pipeline at­tacks, said in a state­ment they were ready to give di­a­logue a chance.

But high­light­ing the frac­tur­ing of mil­i­tants in­to small groups, the pre­vi­ous day a group called Niger Delta Green Jus­tice Man­date claimed an at­tack on a gas pipeline in the south­ern swamps lands.

With­out a uni­fied com­mand and groups dom­i­nat­ed by "gen­er­als" un­able to ful­ly con­trol their own fight­ers, it is dif­fi­cult for the gov­ern­ment to iden­ti­fy the right peo­ple to talk to or en­force any cease­fire.

"Peo­ple are giv­ing up in the short term," one oil in­dus­try source told Reuters of a re­sump­tion in ex­ports of key Niger­ian grades such as For­ca­dos or Qua Iboe, adding you "can't get any­thing" out of the ma­jors, in­clud­ing Shell, Chevron, Exxon­Mo­bil or ENI, about when the oil might come back.

Shell de­clined to com­ment, while the oth­er com­pa­nies did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond­ed to a re­quest for com­ment.

In June, Niger­ian gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials said pri­vate­ly it had a cease­fire with mil­i­tants. But pes­simism crept in, with even Oil Min­is­ter Em­manuel Ibe Kachik­wu telling jour­nal­ists this week "we are talk­ing but (it) is not an easy thing," and "we need a cease­fire"–a con­trast to the be­lief that a cease­fire was un­der­way.

He has al­so said an­oth­er chal­lenge to bro­ker­ing a cease­fire is that there were sev­er­al mil­i­tant groups to talk to.

The prob­lems re­flect deep-seat­ed is­sues in the Niger Delta, which pro­duces the bulk of oil but whose lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties com­plain of pol­lu­tion, a lack of op­por­tu­ni­ties and what they say is an in­suf­fi­cient share of petro dol­lars. These prob­lems are com­pound­ed by an eco­nom­ic cri­sis and a gov­ern­ment bat­tle with Boko Haram mil­i­tants in the north.

"This is like­ly the be­gin­ning," Eliz­a­beth Don­nel­ly, deputy head and re­search fel­low of Lon­don think-tank Chatham House's Africa Pro­gramme said of the un­rest, adding that "the res­o­lu­tion that will come will not come quick­ly."

The gov­ern­ment this month re­sumed cash pay­ments to mil­i­tant groups that it stopped in Feb­ru­ary, just be­fore the launch of the worst vi­o­lence since the pay­ments be­gan un­der a 2009 amnesty. But at­tacks con­tin­ued any­way.

The Delta Avengers claimed the bulk of them, an­nounc­ing strikes on Twit­ter even be­fore oil ma­jors them­selves knew their re­mote pipelines had been hit. Twit­ter shut the group's ac­count, but sources said the Avengers have ex­ten­sive knowl­edge of oil sites, and fol­low the me­dia close­ly to track com­pa­nies' ac­tions.

"With the Avengers, you don't want to say, 'We'll be back up next Wednes­day,' be­cause then you'll get a bomb next Tues­day," one oil ex­ec­u­tive said. "They have to be care­ful."

But new groups, such as the self-styled Rev­o­lu­tion Al­liance, which claimed an at­tack on a Shell-owned oil line, loom, while non-vi­o­lent lo­cal protests have al­so ex­act­ed a toll.

Collings Ede­ma, a lo­cal youth leader of the It­sekiri group that has blocked ac­cess to Chevron's Es­cravos tank farm for al­most two weeks, said, "The oil com­pa­nies have not shown any sign that they are ready to im­prove our lives."

Ex­perts warned that as long as peo­ple are un­hap­py, mil­i­tants and their tar­gets could evolve in un­pre­dictable ways.

"This is al­so about frus­tra­tions of younger peo­ple com­ing up in the Niger Delta and needs not hav­ing been ad­dressed," Don­nel­ly said. "This isn't just about mil­i­tan­cy, though the po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic con­text feeds it."