Kidnapped oil workers: Families await news

Families are awaiting news today about the fate of an Irishman and at least one Briton feared to have been kidnapped in two separate incidents in Nigeria.

The Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed it was providing consular assistance to the family of an Irishman who contacted its officials yesterday.

“Our embassy in Abuja is trying to establish what the situation is,” said a spokesman.

The Department is also investigating reports of kidnappings of other foreign oil workers on rigs off the coast of Nigeria.

RTE received a copy of an email which had apparently been sent by a Cork man named Jim Kiely to Exxon-Mobil employees.

It read: “Urgent this is not a joke, 80 expatriates are being held hostage on the Yoho oil gas platform. The platform has been taken over by 300 Nigerian rebels. We have been refused permission to leave the platform. Communications have been severed.”

The Yoho oil field operated by Exxon-Mobil lies off the coast of Nigeria and is believed to contain 400 million barrels of oil.

The British kidnap victim is believed to be among four foreign workers kidnapped by an armed gang from an offshore oil facility operated by Royal Dutch Shell on Wednesday.

A company employee in Nigeria said it was still unclear who was responsible for the kidnapping.

A Shell spokesman said the four were abducted from a support vessel in the EA field in the Niger Delta area in southern Nigeria.

The spokesman could not confirm the nationalities or identities of the hostages, but local reports suggested one, possibly two, of the hostages were British.

Local communities in Nigeria have been demanding a greater share of revenues from the oil flowing from their land for years. Hostage takings are common and kidnapped workers are usually released unharmed.

Shell workers running the EA platform in the Niger Delta have been taken hostage twice in the past year over a dispute with neighbouring communities, who accuse the company of reneging on a promise to undertake development projects for their impoverished region.

A Croatian was seized in December 2004 and freed days later. Two Germans and four Nigerian oil workers were similarly taken hostage in June and later freed.

Nigeria produces about 2.5 million barrels of oil a day.