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Gunmen seize 7 from oilfield
21/10/2007 14:17 - (SA)
Lagos - Heavily armed gunmen in speedboats kidnapped seven workers, including three foreigners, from an offshore Nigerian oilfield in a major setback to peace in the
Niger Delta.
The raid on Saturday night was the first big attack on an oil facility in five months since the inauguration of President
Umaru Yar'Adua, who had started a peace process to address rebel
demands for more regional autonomy in the oil-producing wetlands
of southern Nigeria.
"Seven people were kidnapped from a supply vessel to the EA
field. They are four Nigerians and three expats," said Olav
Ljose, a spokesperson for Royal Dutch Shell, which
operates the offshore field.
He confirmed that the three foreigners were a Briton, a
Croat and a Russian.
All other workers have been evacuated from the facility,
which has not produced any oil since an earlier militant attack
in February 2006. It had been expected to resume production by
the middle of next year.
Security sources said the attackers armed with assault
rifles came in up to 30 boats, engaged troops in a three-hour
gunfight and made away with the support vessel on which the
hostages had been working. One person was injured.
No group has claimed responsibility.
"This punctures the idea that things are coming back to
normal," a government official said, asking not to be named.
Nigeria is Africa's top oil producer.
Militant attacks and abductions since February 2006 have
forced Western companies to reduce Nigerian oil production by a
fifth, contributing to a rise in global oil prices.
Arrest
Yar'Adua has made contact with the main armed groups in
preparation for formal talks before the end of the year, but
militants were angered by the arrest last month of a prominent
rebel leader, Henry Okah, in Angola.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend)
on Sept. 23 threatened to resume attacks on oil facilities and
to abduct foreign workers in response to the arrest.
Nigeria has asked Angola to send Okah to Nigeria to stand
trial but the two countries have no extradition treaty.
Delta activists say the government has also been dragging
its feet in the peace talks and offering incentives to militant
negotiators instead of addressing their underlying grievances.
"If the oil companies and the Nigerian government do not
handle the situation well, they will bring out the beast in us,"
Mend said in an e-mail to Reuters before the attack on Saturday.
"The divide and rule tactics have failed because the
so-called elders and supposed militants who accepted bribes to
betray one of their own cannot bring the peace," it added.
The attack is a setback for Shell's plan to resume
production from the western Niger Delta, including the EA field
off the coast of Bayelsa state.
The company reduced output in the western delta by 477 000
barrels per day (bpd) after the attacks in February 2006 and had
been working to recover most of the lost output by the middle of
next year.
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