Gunmen shot dead two policemen in Nigeria’s oil centre of Port Harcourt on Friday in a failed attempt to kidnap two foreign oil workers, the senior police official in charge of the area said.
Police Commissioner Felix Ogbaudu said two gunmen in military fatigues attacked a car taking the two expatriates to work about 8 a.m. “The two foreign workers escaped unhurt,” Ogbaudu said.
The workers are contractors for a subsidiary of oil multinational Total SA, Ogbaudu said. Officials of the company were not immediately available for comment.
Nigeria is the world’s eight-biggest oil exporter, with most of that oil coming from the delta around Port Harcourt. The area has seen an upsurge of armed violence in recent years, most of it the kidnapping for ransom of foreign oil workers. More than 150 foreigners have been seized in the past year in the vast region of swamps, mangrove creeks and rivers. Nearly all were freed unharmed.
Government troops are battling militia groups fighting for increased share of oil revenue for the impoverished region as well as criminal gangs that have grown rich from the illegal trade in crude oil tapped from pipelines. At least a quarter of Nigeria’s normal exports of 2.5 million barrels daily have been cut by the violence.
Nigeria is the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports.