Reuters) — Foreign workers were kidnapped from a car under police escort in Nigeria’s southern oil capital of Port Harcourt on Thursday, an industry source said, a day after a U.S. oil executive was shot dead there.
A police spokesman confirmed that at least one expatriate had been abducted, but added that one suspected kidnapper had been arrested.
Port Harcourt is the largest city in the Niger Delta, and several oil multinationals have major offices there, including Royal Dutch Shell and Agip.
On Wednesday a gunman on a motorcycle shot dead a U.S. oil executive in the city in an apparently planned assassination.
But militants who have been waging a five-month-long campaign against the oil industry said they had no hand in the killing of the executive, who worked for Texan oil services company Baker Hughes.
A diplomat and oil industry source said it was more likely to be linked to a work-related dispute.
Attacks by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) have forced multinationals to cut Nigerian oil exports by a quarter, and the group had threatened this week to carry out more attacks on oil industry targets and individuals.