Reuters) – A foreign oil worker was kidnapped from an offshore drilling rig in Nigeria on Saturday, industry and diplomatic sources said.
One diplomat said the worker was British but the nationality could not be immediately confirmed.
“An expat was kidnapped from the Bulford Dolphin rig,” said an industry source, without giving any further details.
The rig is situated about 40 miles off the coast of the lawless Niger Delta, Nigeria’s oil heartland where kidnappings of foreign workers for ransom or to press political demands are common.
Six Britons, one American and a Canadian were kidnapped from Bulford Dolphin on June 2 last year in a night raid by gunmen in speedboats. They were released two days later.
A spokesman for Britain’s Foreign Office said: “We are looking into it. We can’t confirm anything at this stage.”
The Bulford Dolphin rig is owned by the Norwegian oilfield services group Fred Olsen Energy ASA and leased to Nigerian firm Peak Petroleum, which operates it in partnership with Equator Exploration .
The facility is an exploration rig that will not produce crude for years.
The Niger Delta, which accounts for all of Nigeria’s approximately 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in crude exports, has been hit by a wave of abductions and attacks on oil facilities since late 2005.
Oil production has been down by 500,000 bpd since February last year because of a series of raids on Royal Dutch Shell oilfields that month by a rebel group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). A MEND spokesman said the group was not involved in the latest abduction.
MEND has taken hostages to press its demands for greater local control of oil revenues, but numerous other “freelance” kidnappers have seized foreigners to extract hefty ransoms from companies or local authorities.
Analysts say the violence in the delta is rooted in poverty and a collapse in basic public services due to endemic corruption in government.
Millions of villagers with no access to clean water, electricity or roads resent the multi-billion dollar oil industry and its web of pipelines criss-crossing their lands.
Nigeria is the world’s eighth biggest exporter of crude oil. (Additional reporting by Adrian Croft in London)