Eni SpA said that Feyi Dienye, a Nigerian citizen in charge of local community relations in the Port Harcourt district for Nigeria Agip Oil Company (NAOC), has been kidnapped early this morning while going to the office. NAOC is Eni’s subsidiary operating in Nigeria. The Italian oil group is cooperating closely with the local authorities in order to resolve the situation positively, according to a statement on its website.
Earlier a company spokesman said that gunmen had kidnapped a company manager and wounded his driver, without identifying them.
The man was snatched from his car close to the Nigerian Port Authority offices in Port Harcourt, the region’s oil capital, spokesman Harsen Orife told the news agency AFP.
He said the driver of the vehicle was shot and was being treated at the company’s clinic.
Violent attacks and kidnappings targeting oil companies have been frequent throughout the Niger Delta and in Port Harcourt in particular in the past two years.
Some are carried out by militants claiming to be fighting for a larger share of the region’s oil wealth for the local people, others by criminal gangs out to make ransom money.
Most of those taken hostage have been released unharmed after a few days or a few weeks, very often after the payment of a ransom.
Since the start of 2006 the unrest in the Niger Delta has cut oil output in Nigeria, the world’s eighth-largest crude exporter, by a quarter to 2.1 mln barrels per day.