Militants have vacated an oil pumping station operated by the Italian oil giant Agip after a two-week siege, freeing about 30 workers and soldiers, officials said on Monday.
”The armed men left the facility in the early hours of yesterday [Sunday] after a truce was brokered by the Bayesla state government,” said the governor’s spokesperson Welson Ekiyor.
A senior police officer also confirmed the development. ”The problem has been resolved. The hostages have been released and the flowstation vacated.”
He could not say if any ransom was paid to the militants before the deal was struck.
Oil companies operating in the restive region are known to have paid large amounts of dollars for the release of hostages but none has ever publicly admitted to doing so.
Armed gunmen had occupied the Tebidaba flowstation in Bayelsa state on November 6, but officials said no expatriate workers were involved in the attack.
The company was forced to shut down operation at the facility because of the seizure, losing some undisclosed barrels of crude.
Attacks on oil installations, kidnappings of foreigners and sometimes killings of Nigerian oil workers, are carried out by armed groups who claim to be seeking a larger share of the country’s oil wealth and jobs for the local community.
Since January, separatists and armed groups seeking benefits from the oil wealth for the Delta’s 14-million strong ethnic Ijaw community have been blamed for a spate of violent attacks on multinational oil firms and their personnel.
Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer and the world’s sixth oil producer, accounts for about 2,6-million barrels of crude in daily exports, but recent unrest in the Niger delta has cut back output by a quarter. – Sapa-AFP