Five Russian oil workers kidnapped from their vessel off Nigeria’s Niger Delta last week have been released unharmed, a senior state security official said on Monday.
”They’re looking healthy but tired,” the official said, asking not to be named. The men were taken from a vessel believed to be working for Italian oilfield services company Saipem SpA late on Thursday.
Eight other Russian, Latvian and Lithuanian men who had been kidnapped in a separate incident from a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tanker were also released on Saturday, hours after being seized.
Insecurity in Nigeria, the world’s eighth biggest oil exporter, has cut oil output by about a fifth since militants launched a campaign of sabotage in early 2006 to press for greater development in their neglected communities.
Criminal gangs have taken advantage of the breakdown in law and order, frequently kidnapping businessmen, local politicians and foreign oil workers for ransom.
Security contractors said the latest spate of abductions — including at least three separate incidents late last week — appeared deliberately designed to stretch the security forces at a time when militants have vowed attacks on oil facilities.
The main militant group in the region, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), said on Monday it had attacked two major crude oil pipelines belonging to Royal Dutch Shell, pushing world oil prices up.
Gunmen in the Niger Delta are still holding two Filipinos and a Nigerian working in the oil industry who were taken late last week, as well as two Germans working for construction firm Julius Berger, kidnapped two weeks ago. – Reuters