A Romanian seized from an offshore oil vessel off Nigeria Wednesday has been released, an army spokesman said Thursday.
The spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Musa Sagir, said he had no details on the circumstances of the man’s release.
The Romanian was seized from the oil tanker MT Meredith when it was attacked by gunmen in speedboats early Wednesday offshore from the Bonny oil export terminal in southern Nigeria.
Later Wednesday, the best-known militant group in the region, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said the attack was carried out by one of its allies.
MEND said it was in touch with its ally and that it would ensure “the abducted man is released unharmed at the earliest convenience”.
The Romanian foreign ministry confirmed the kidnapping in the Niger Delta and said Bucharest had taken all the necessary steps to obtain his release.
The MT Meredith, loaded with 4,000 tonnes of diesel, sustained “massive damage” during the attack, according to a private security source, who asked not to be named.
On Sunday, militants attacked a loading vessel, a tanker and a tug boat at a crude oil platform operated by Shell in Bonny and took eight crew members hostage. They killed one person and injured the captain of the tug boat.
There has been a surge in violent attacks on Nigeria’s oil industry and kidnappings of both local and foreign oil workers since January 2006.
The unrest has reduced the country’s oil output by more than one quarter and production currently stands around two million barrels a day against 2.6 million barrels three years ago.