No word on Filipino oil workers abducted in Nigeria
PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria, June 22 (Reuters) Nigerian authorities have failed to locate or make contact with two Filipino oil workers who were kidnapped on Tuesday by six gunmen in a speed boat, police today said.
The men were seized from a small boat in Port Harcourt, the main city in the southern Niger Delta, where a wave of abductions and attacks on the oil industry have shut down a quarter of Nigeria's output of crude oil since February.
It was not clear whether the Filipino workers were kidnapped by militants waging a campaign to gain greater local control over oil resources, or by a group seeking money for their release. Abductions for ransoms are common in the delta.
''We still don't know who the kidnappers are and we have not made any arrests, but the investigation is still going on,'' a police spokeswoman in Port Harcourt said.
The men were under contract to Norwegian-based oil services company Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS). Their direct employer is a company called Beaufort International.
''We still have not made any contact with the kidnappers, but we are doing everything we can to bring the situation to a quick and successful conclusion,'' said PGS spokesman Ola Bosterud.
The militant Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which has staged a series of bloody attacks on oil facilities and kidnapped a total of 18 expat oil workers this year, has said it was not involved in the latest case.
The Niger Delta produces all of Nigeria's 2.4 million barrels of oil daily, but impoverished local communities have seen little benefit from decades of oil production. This has caused an increasingly violent backlash against the industry.
The delta's problems are worsened by pollution, lawlessness, corruption and struggles for control of a lucrative oil theft business.
Niger Delta kidnappers routinely ask for and receive money, and normally release their captives unharmed after a few days.
REUTERS SB PC2223