Nigerian officials were pursuing talks Thursday with armed militants aimed at securing the release of nine foreign oilmen who were kidnapped six days ago from a barge in the Niger Delta.
The nine hostages — three Americans, a Briton, two Egyptians, two Thais and one Filipino — were seized on Saturday by separatist guerrillas during an attack on the energy giant Shell’s Forcados oil terminal.
Following the attack, in which at least two pipelines were blown up, Shell suspended loading at Forcados and evacuated its EA offshore field, cutting Nigeria’s exports by 455,000 barrels per day or around a fifth.
Abel Oshevire, a spokesman for Delta State’s Governor James Ibori, said that talks were making progress, adding: “It’s on. We are expecting anything can happen between now and as soon as overnight.”
Delta State authorities made similarly optimistic statements on Tuesday.
A Shell spokesman said the firm had had no news of the hostages — who work for its US subcontractor Willbros — and that there was as yet no plan to resume full oil production or export in the western delta.
Nigeria’s federal government has branded the kidnappers criminals, accusing them of using the cause of ethnic Ijaw separatism to mask the business of stealing crude from illegally tapped pipelines and smuggling it abroad.
But Ibori and other Delta State officials have said that the kidnapping was a reaction from a community which interpreted air raids on smuggling barges as an attack on their villages and seized the foreigners as “human shields”.
Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil producer and the world’s sixth biggest exporter, but the wealth generated by the industry has not filtered down to the 20 million largely impoverished people living in the delta’s swamps and cities.