Nigeria’s oil workers to release hostages
The agreement securing the release of the more than 250 captives including 35 Britons, 17 Americans and two Canadians was reached yesterday between owners of the four oil rigs and negotiators for the Nigerian hostage-takers, said the secretary general of Nigeria's biggest oil workers union, Joseph Akinlaja.
Guy Cantwell, a spokesman for the Houston-based owner of the rigs, Transocean Inc, also said he understood the hostages would leave the offshore oil platforms, where they have been held since April 19 by about 100 disgruntled Nigerian workers.
"A communique is being prepared to ensure everyone on the rig will leave," Cantwell said by telephone from Houston, USA.
Details of when and how the hostages will leave the oil installations were being arranged, Akinlaja said.
The rigs, about 20 miles off Nigeria's coast, are drilling wells run on behalf of multinationals Royal/ Dutch Shell and TotalFinaElf.
Sabotage and hostage-takings by community activists, labour groups and gangs demanding compensation for land use and alleged environmental damage are relatively common in the southern Niger Delta, where nearly all of Nigeria's oil is drilled.
