Eight Nigerian hostages escaped and five others were released from an oil facility where they had been held along with dozens of other people since armed men raided the Italian-run pumping station earlier this week, company officials said.
Forty-eight Nigerian employees of Agip, a subsidiary of Italian oil giant Eni SpA, had been held in the south of the country since armed protesters overran and shut down Agip’s Tebidaba oil pumping station on Monday, shutting off around 50 000 barrels of crude production per day.
A Rome-based spokesperson for the company said six of the hostages escaped on Thursday and made their way to a neighbouring state, where they were treated by Agip staff for minor injuries from running through the swamps. The spokesperson declined to be named, citing company policies.
In a statement posted late on Thursday on its website, Eni said the six workers reached Agip’s compound in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt. It said two others also escaped and returned to their homes unharmed, while five other people were released. It gave no details.
Hafiz Ringim, the police commissioner for Bayelsa State, where the pumping station is located, said earlier that the kidnappers were demanding a ransom of $75 000 to free the hostages.
”Negotiations are still going on. But these people are always asking for money,” Ringim said. ”Most of these hostage takings are just about money.”
The Agip spokesperson could not clarify the circumstances surrounding the employees’ escape and had no knowledge of a ransom request. He said the closure of the facility was a security precaution and the company had no news on whether the was any damage.
Kidnapping is increasingly common in oil-rich Nigeria, where the majority of people continue to live in abject poverty despite tens of billions of dollars made by the government in oil revenues every year.
More than 60 foreigners have been taken hostage so far this year, along with many more Nigerians. The kidnappings usually end peacefully, although one Nigerian hostage was shot dead in August during a botched rescue attempt.
In a separate incident on Tuesday, an American and a Briton working for a Norwegian oil services company were freed after spending five nights in captivity. Their captors had demanded a hospital and erosion protection for their community.
Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil exporter and the fifth-largest supplier of crude to the United States. – Sapa-AP