A north-east oil worker has been taken hostage by militants in Nigeria, it emerged last night.
The man, named by sources as Bruce Strachan, was working in Port Harcourt when he was snatched by two gunmen on Thursday night.
It is understood that Mr Strachan works for Aberdeen-based Global Lifting Services, which has an office in the Bridge of Don, and lives locally. He is believed to have a wife and one child.
Last night a company spokesman said that the firm’s Nigerian arm was dealing with the situation. However, he did not want to release anymore details about the employee in case it hindered the effort to free him.
The Foreign Office confirmed the kidnapping, saying that the Nigerian authorities were leading the fight to have the man freed.
Lieutenant-Colonel Musa Sagir, a local military spokesman, said Mr Strachan was seized in an upmarket part of town late Thursday evening.
Oil services firm Global Lifting carries out work all over the world for firms including Chevron, Texaco, ConocoPhillips, Shell, BP and Talisman.
As well as Aberdeen, it has offices in Trinidad, Egypt and Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
Nigerian militants are also currently holding two other Brits and are refusing to release them in a protest against Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s pledge to help the trouble-torn country fight terrorism.
The African oil hub’s main militant group, The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), said it will not free the men captured from a supply vessel until Mr Brown retracts his vow to help reinstall security in the delta.
The HD Blue Ocean was attacked by unidentified gunmen on September 9 at the entrance of the Sambreiro River in the hostile Niger Delta, a vast network of mangrove creeks which is home to Africa’s biggest oil industry.
Since January 2006, 44 Britons and more than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Nigeria. One Briton was killed.
In October that year, four north-east men were taken hostage. Graeme Buchan, 30, of Stuartfield, near Mintlaw, Paul Smith, 32, of Peterhead, Sandy Cruden, 45, of Inverurie, and George McLean, 42, of Elgin, were among seven men seized at gunpoint from a bar.
They were held for almost three weeks by a gang who assaulted them with sticks and machetes and at one point they were told they would be sacrificed.
Mr Buchan twice had a gun put to his head and was ordered to call Mr Smith’s wife and tell her first that her husband was ill and later that he had died. All the men were later released.