Militants overrun oilfield in Nigeria, 24 held

Lagos, June 18: Gunmen overran a Nigerian oilfield station operated by Italy's Eni today, holding 24 local workers hostage, the company said.

The militants invaded the Ogbainbiri facility in Bayelsa state, which normally produces 40,000 barrels a day, after a gunfight with soldiers guarding it.

''Eni is already collaborating with the authorities of Bayelsa to find a solution as quickly as possible,'' a company spokeswoman said, adding that 24 Nigerian staff were being held at the facility.

It was unclear if anyone was killed or injured in the attack. The spokeswoman did not say whether oil production had stopped, but it is routine practice to shut down a facility when it is attacked.

The invasion was apparently in response to the killing of eight people by troops guarding Ogbainbiri last week, security sources said. The military said the dead were militants who tried to attack the oilfield, but a militant group said they were mostly unarmed civilians.

The clashes are a setback to a nascent peace initiative by the newly inaugurated President Umaru Yar'Adua and militants who have crippled Africa's largest oil industry.

A prominent militant leader, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, was released on bail last week, meeting a key demand of armed groups who have led a campaign of kidnapping of foreign workers and bombings of oil facilities for 18 months.

About 600,000 barrels a day of Nigerian oil output are still off line because of the attacks, and thousands of foreign workers have fled the region.

Militants had released about 30 hostages since Yar'Adua's inauguration on May 29, and Asari said he was willing to work with the new government. There are about 10 other hostages still being held by armed groups in the delta.

Militants complain of neglect and poverty in the delta, which produces all of Nigeria's oil but where most people live without access to electricity, clean water, roads or decent schools. But the line between militancy and crime is blurred and most of the kidnapping is by groups seeking ransoms.

Some militant groups want outright independence for the remote region of swamps and mangrove-lined creeks, while others seek more regional control over the oil wealth and compensation for decades of oil spills.

Reuters>