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Rig hostages freed

    ABIDJAN

    Militant youths have released unharmed 99 oil workers held hostage since Thursday on a rig in southern Nigeria, news organisations reported. The offshore rig, 100 km off Nigeria’s coast, is owned by Houston-based Transocean Sedco Forex and was drilling on behalf of oil giant Royal/Dutch Shell, the BBC reported.

    “Our people went into negotiations with the youths and the hostage takers agreed to vacate the rig last night, but it was late so they couldn’t leave,” the BBC reported a Shell spokesman as saying on Monday. Of the hostages released 19 were foreign nationals: five each from Britain and the United States, three Australians, and one each from South Africa and Trinidad, news organisations reported. The nationalities of the remaining foreign hostages were not named. Eighty others were Nigerian.

    Hostage taking has become commonplace in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Irate youths have been demanding a greater share of the region’s oil wealth and accuse the multinational oil firms operating there of causing environmental damage.

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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