Nigeria sends warships to hostage oil rigs

Nigerian warships ships were sailing today towards offshore platforms where 97 foreign oil workers – including 35 Britons – were being held hostage by disgruntled local workers.

“We have deployed the navy to the trouble spot,” said navy spokesman Captain Shinebi Hungiapuko. He declined to say how many ships were involved in the operation.

The move by Nigerian security forces came as oil officials held negotiations with union members representing the strikers.

Hungiapuko said his naval forces “want to make sure everything is sorted out amicably if possible.” However if negotiations fail, “then we will do what we have to do,” he said without elaborating.

About 100 strikers have prevented the expatriate oil workers from leaving four offshore rigs owned by Houston-based Transocean since April 19. Another 170 Nigerian “third-party personnel” from other companies were also being prevented from leaving.

The Transocean rigs were drilling wells on behalf of oil multinationals Royal/Dutch Shell and TotalFinaElf.

The hostage takers have blocked access to helicopter landing pads and ports on the facilities. The strikers are protesting against a company decision to use boats instead of helicopters to ferry Nigerian staff to the rigs. They are also angered by company moves to dismiss five oil union members.

Some of the hostages said they fear their captors will kill them or blow up the rigs if authorities try to free them with armed raids. Their conditions were unclear, although no injuries or deaths had been reported.

“Make no mistake of the danger we’re in,” one hostage said in an e-mail message read by Jake Molloy, general secretary of the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee, an Aberdeen based union that has members among the hostages. “If they have lost everything, they will make sure we lose everything. And that means our lives.”

Company officials, however, dismissed reports that any oil workers had been threatened.

National leaders of Nigeria’s largest oil union, which is not officially supporting the strike, were meeting Transocean executives and the strikers’ chosen local union representatives in a bid to end the impasse.

“We hope to resolve the problem today,” said Elijah Okougbo, deputy secretary-general of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers of Nigeria.

Many of the strikers had signalled willingness to end their stand-off but wanted assurances first they wouldn’t lose their jobs, Molloy said.

Sabotage and hostage takings by community activists, labour groups and thugs demanding compensation for land use and alleged environmental damage are relatively common in the Niger Delta, where nearly all of Nigeria’s oil is drilled. Hostages rarely are harmed.

A British hostage told his wife on Tuesday that the hostage-takers were threatening to blow up the rigs if anyone tries to storm them, Molloy said.

The woman, whom Molloy declined to identify, said her husband did not believe the strikers had explosives. Molloy did not know if the strikers had guns, although he said some hostages said their captors were armed with the installation’s fire-fighting axes.

Ethnic and political violence is another frequent hazard in the region. Fighting in March shut down nearly 40% of Nigeria’s production of 2.2 million barrels a day.