Nigeria’s oil workers to release hostages

STRIKING Nigerian oil workers will release hundreds of hostages they’ve held for weeks aboard rigs off the West African nation’s shore, negotiators said yesterday.

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.