Armed youths have released dozens of Nigerian employees of the oil company Shell and its subcontractors, but about 15 workers are still being held at a flow station in the restive Niger Delta, security sources said on Wednesday.
About 60 workers were taken hostage on Tuesday morning when the armed youths seized the Shell flow station on the Nun river in Bayelsa State.
“The majority of these people were released very late on Tuesday,” a Shell official said in the oil centre of Port Harcourt.
“Fifteen are still detained, but there is hope that they might likely be released today [Wednesday]. Negotiations are going on.”
According to different sources, there are no foreigners amongst the hostages, kidnapped by the youths to protest that Shell has not implemented an agreement it had with the Oporoma community to improve their standard of living.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), one of the principal separatist groups in the area, said it was not responsible for the hostage-taking.
Shell, which did not release the identities either of those freed or those still being held, said there had been no casualties in the attack but said “the Nun river flow station has been shut, resulting in production loss of 12 000 barrels of oil per day”.
The Anglo-Dutch company, which produces about half the total exports of Nigerian crude oil of 2,6-million barrels a day, is losing about 477 000 barrels a day because of recurrent violence in the region.
Over the past nine months, dozens of wells and oil platforms have been closed and workers evacuated.
There was no news, meanwhile, of the four Scots, a Malaysian, an Indonesian and a Romanian who worked for the oil service firms Oceaneering and Sparrows, sub-contractors to ExxonMobil, who were kidnapped over a week ago in Akwa Ibom State.
The hostage-taking, described by some as “labour talks àla Nigerian”, made the headlines of many newspapers on Wednesday, whereas most incidents in the delta are relegated to the inside pages as they have become so routine.
Last week 14 Nigerian soldiers were killed and 25 Shell employees kidnapped in another attack in the neighbouring Rivers State by about 70 heavily armed men aboard fast boats.
Those 25 were released two days later.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo called a crisis meeting with senior officials in the security services last week to evaluate the situation in this region, vital to Nigeria’s economy as oil production from the Niger Delta accounts for 95% of the country’s foreign currency revenues.
Tensions have flared in the area because its inhabitants not only live on an average of less than $1 a day but they also complain that their water and soil is being polluted by the oil companies. — AFP