Kidnappings worry oil firms

Oil firms operating in the Niger Delta, Nigeria's main petroleum-producing region, are worried by recent seizures and abductions by militant youths agitating for more access to power and oil wealth. For more than a week now, a group calling itself Enough is Enough has been holding a helicopter belonging to a Royal/Dutch Shell sub-contractor and its two foreign crew members, while three people were killed last week after youths invaded a village in southern Bayelsa State to free two local oil workers taken hostage by a rival group. "Oil firms have become afraid to send their employees to remote locations in the Niger Delta due to the growing frequency of hostage-taking by armed youths who invariably demand some ransom," a senior official of an oil multinational told IRIN. "Not only are the demands endless, their means of making them are becoming increasingly desperate." Shell officials said the group which seized the craft and crew of Bristow Helicopters, working on contract with Shell, at the company's Enhwe oil facility are demanding medical treatment abroad for three of their colleagues injured at Kaiama town in a recent clash with soldiers. The clash had followed a declaration by the Ijaw Youths Congress (a militant Ijaw umbrella group) asking transnationals operating in Nigeria to leave ethnic Ijaw areas pending the determination of ownership and control of the oil resources. The four million Ijaws, Nigeria's fourth largest ethnic group, occupy most of the Niger Delta. The region produces the bulk of the oil that is the main source of revenue for Africa's most populous country and its over 108 million people. Nigeria's previous military government, led by General Abdulsalami Abubakar, responded to the threat to oil companies by sending the army into the region, and dozens of people died when soldiers clashed with armed youth militants. President Olusegun Obasanjo, who took power on 29 May, has promised to address and redress claims of neglect by the Delta's ethnic minorities, but this has not been enough to assuage militants now bent on taking the law into their hands. "We are being forced to review and curtail our operations because of the rising violence, because obviously we don't want any harm to befall our employees," another senior official of a Western oil multinational said.