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Foreign oil workers held hostage
29/04/2003 11:58 - (SA)
Lagos - About 70 foreign workers were being held hostage on Tuesday by striking Nigerian employees on four oil rigs off the country's coast, a drilling company said.
A strike by members of the Nigerian Union of Petroleum and National Gas Workers (Nupeng) against the US drilling firm Transocean has turned into a stand-off, with about 100 strikers preventing the international staff and managers from leaving the rigs.
The workers are striking to protest against the sacking of five colleagues for alleged theft and were blocking landing pads to stop helicopters from evacuating the rigs, Transocean said in a statement from its headquarters in Houston, Texas.
The company said it obtained a court injunction on Monday ordering the workers to leave the rigs, located 100km offshore from southeastern Nigeria.
However, officials on some of the rigs are warning the company against trying to enforce the injunction, according to memos published in a British newspaper on Tuesday.
"I foresee big trouble if Transocean decides to pursue an armed enforcement of this court injunction," said an e-mail message from a supervisor working on one of the rigs for the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell, the Glasgow Herald reported.
"The situation on all four rigs remains calm," said the statement from Transocean, the world's biggest offshore drilling contractor.
The company first made an official statement about the strike on April 22. It did not acknowledge that the foreign workers - mainly Britons and Americans - were being forcibly held until family members relayed the conditions described by the workers in telephone conversations. - Sapa-DPA
- SAPA
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