Kidnappers have snatched nine Chinese oil workers in central Sudan, the third such incident over the past year in the oil-producing region, the Sudanese government and diplomats said on Sunday.
The government blamed a Darfur rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), for the kidnapping but diplomats said the captors were probably local tribesmen.
Chinese embassy spokesperson Raymond Yu said the kidnappers abducted the workers on Saturday in South Kordofan, source of a large part of Sudan’s oil wealth. China is the biggest foreign investor in the African country.
Ali Youssef, head of protocol at the Sudanese foreign ministry, told Reuters the kidnappers were believed to be members of the ”Kordofan sector” of JEM.
”Initial information also indicates that the hostages and the captors are still in the South Kordofan area,” he said. ”Security forces are trying to chase them.”
JEM leaders were not immediately available for comment. But the group said recently it was taking its campaign against the government beyond the borders of Darfur to Kordofan and other regions, which it claims Khartoum is neglecting.
The group kidnapped five oil workers — an Egyptian, an Iraqi and three Sudanese — in October 2007. It said at the time the move was a warning to oil firms it accuses of funding Khartoum through oil revenues. The men were later released.
The government and rebel groups routinely trade accusations about various violations in Darfur, which borders South Kordofan and where a conflict between both sides has raged since 2003.
Diplomats in Khartoum said the kidnappers were probably members of the same tribal group that seized four Indian oil workers and their driver in the region in May. The captors were described at the time as disaffected locals.
Yu said it was too early to identify the kidnappers.
One diplomat said the nine men and two Sudanese drivers were seized from a small field while doing contract work for the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC). The company is a consortium led by China’s CNPC, that also includes India’s ONGC, Malaysia’s Petronas and Sudan’s state-owned Sudapet.
”One driver was released and handed over a note by the captors demanding a settlement through a share of oil production,” the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The source said locals had ransacked a Chinese camp in the same area two weeks ago and taken everything ”including the beds and bed sheets.”
”This is a dangerous area. This could happen again.”
The plains of South Kordofan are inhabited by Arab nomads and other tribes that have been protesting about oil revenues being taken out of the region. They say the underdeveloped region has seen little of the oil wealth that has filled government coffers in Khartoum and the semi-autonomous south.
According to GNPOC’s website, the consortium produces more than 300 000 barrels of crude per day (bpd) in Sudan’s Blocks 1, 2 and 4. Sudan produces about 500 000 bpd of crude.
Walid Khadduri, a respected Arab oil analyst, said the kidnappings make work in the Sudanese oil industry more dangerous but added: ”It will not stop the investment.”
”Look at Nigeria, oil workers have been kidnapped and killed … but the investment has not stopped,” he said.
The tribal group that kidnapped the four Indian workers in May later released one man and a Sudanese driver, while two others escaped. The fourth man, who also escaped from his captors but never returned to base, is believed to be dead. – Reuters