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One killed, four kidnapped at Italian oil facility in Nigeria
By Helen Vesperini
AFP
LAGOS
Petroleumworld.com 12 08 06At least one person was killed Thursday and four foreigners were kidnapped during an attack by armed assailants against an oil installation belonging to Italy's Agip in southern Nigeria, a military officer said.
"One boy was killed by a stray bullet", he said, adding that he could not comment on the victim's identity or nationality.
A spokesperson for ENI, Agip's Italian parent company, told the Sky TG 24 television news network that the victim was a "child of eight". The child appears to have been a mere bystander.
"Three Italians and one Lebanese were taken hostage," the Nigerian officer said.
ENI said the attack on an oil pumping station occurred at around 5:00 am at the Brass oilfield in Bayelsa state in the restive Niger Delta region.
Lebanese diplomats in Lagos were not able to confirm a national was among those kidnapped.
Likewise, the spokesman for Bayelsa State government Ekiyor Welson, told AFP: "No Lebanese was kidnapped. There are only three hostages".
The military officer also said at least one person, "Agip's operations superintendent", was wounded in the attack and evacuated for treatment, but was again unable to comment on the man's nationality.
An official at the foreign ministry crisis cell confirmed one person, who was "not Italian", had been injured.
"One person was wounded in the attack," Elisabetta Belloni, an ENI spokeswoman told the Sky TG 24 television news network.
ENI said it had not received any claim of responsibility.
Welson said the attackers "came from the direction of Rivers State and went back
in that direction". Rivers state borders on Bayelsa to the east.
"We have set in motion a mechanism to try to get them back. They are definitely not in Bayelsa State", he said.
Since January, separatists and militant groups claiming to seek a larger share of oil wealth for the Niger Delta's 14-million strong ethnic Ijaw community have been blamed for a spate of violent attacks on multinational oil companies and their personnel.
Local communities in the delta, the country's oil hub, accuse oil companies of failing to honour agreements with host communities on provision of social amenities and jobs, and continue to demand a more equitable share of the oil revenue derived from the region.
Observers however say oil companies unwittingly encourage violent attacks for financial gain by secretly paying hefty ransoms to secure the release of their kidnapped personnel.
On November 22, a British employee of ENI was killed when Nigerian security forces attempted to rescue him and six other hostages being held by an armed group.
Some 600 people, including two Americans and one Briton, have been killed in the region over the past six years, while over 1,000 others have either been detained on oil facilities or abducted by armed men in the same period, according to statistics compiled by AFP since July 2000.
In 2006 alone, at least 37 troops deployed to quell violence in the delta have been killed.
Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer and world's fifth largest exporter, derives more than 95 percent of its foreign exchange from oil, but unrest in the delta in recent months has caused the country's daily output, normally some 2.6 million barrels, to fall by about 25 per cent.
World crude prices rose on Thursday, with the benchmark Brent North Sea crude for January delivery gaining 30 cents to 63.37 dollars in electronic trading in London, supported both by the attack in Nigeria and by a drop in US energy inventories.
The events have triggered concerns over tight supplies a week before OPEC looks set to reduce its oil output.
AFP 07 1833 GMT 12 06
Copyright© 2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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