Foreign oil workers kidnapped in Nigeria
Report By Austin Ekeinde
Three foreign oil workers, including one Italian, were kidnapped from a car under armed escort in Nigeria's oil capital Port Harcourt on Thursday, a day after a U.S. oil executive was shot dead in the same city.
Police and industry sources said the abduction of the employees of Italian oil contractor Saipem was sparked by a dispute between the company and a community where it is working and that efforts were under way to secure their release.
"The matter is being worked on and is moving toward positive results," Rivers State Police Commissioner Samuel Agbetuyi told Reuters by telephone, adding that one suspected kidnapper had been arrested.
The militant Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which has waged a campaign of attacks against the oil industry in the world's eighth largest exporter, said it was not involved in the kidnapping.
Industry sources said the three men were traveling in two SUVs with a police escort when they were stopped by gunmen, who disarmed their security.
They were taken from the cars to a nearby boat on one of the multitude of mangrove-lined creeks that runs through the vast wetlands region.
SHOOTING
On Wednesday a gunman on a motorcycle shot dead a U.S. citizen working for Texan oil services company Baker Hughes in an apparently planned assassination. Diplomatic and oil industry sources said the killing was probably an isolated incident related to a work dispute.
Kidnapping is a fairly common method used by impoverished villages in the lawless delta, suffering neglect from their own government, to extract benefits or cash from oil companies.
Port Harcourt is the largest city in the Niger Delta, which pumps all of Nigeria's oil, and several multinationals have major offices there, including Royal Dutch Shell and Agip.
The kidnapping and killing add to a rising trend of violent crime and communal unrest in the vast wetlands region, which coincides with heightened political instability in Nigeria ahead of elections next year.
MEND's emergence in December has raised the stakes in the delta, because it introduced a more professional military style of attack, more deadly firepower and a more focused political dimension to the militancy.
As usual....your Nigerian Police or Army security detail care more about their lives and welfare than protecting the protectee.
The message in the killing is simple....cooperate or die.
(In a purely honest attempt at being cynical....maybe the staff of CHC and BHL should consider retaining the services of MEND to represent them in their Industrial Actions.)