Foreign oil workers kidnapped

Gunmen seized four more foreign workers amid a dramatic rise in violence that has rocked Nigeria’s southern petroleum-producing region, oil industry officials said today.

The attackers carrying assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades stormed a transport vessel carrying the workers in the southern Niger Delta last night, private industry officials said.

Further details were not immediately available.

Earlier yesterday, militants staged coordinated attacks on three pipelines in the wetlands region, the most damaging assault on the country’s vital oil infrastructure in over a year, marking a heightening of hostilities.

Nigeria is Africa’s largest producer of crude, one of the top 10 exporters in the world and a leading supplier of oil for the United States.

The near-simultaneous blasts yesterday follow the kidnappings of dozens of foreign oil workers last week, a sequence of events militants say is intended to shut down the continent’s largest crude oil exporter.

Analysts believe armed groups are heightening the tempo of attacks in a bid to demonstrate their relevance ahead of this month’s handover of power to a newly-elected government.

It was unclear if the attacks were linked in the massive Niger Delta, roamed by various militant and criminal outfits.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, the largest militant group in Nigeria’s oil-rich region, claimed responsibility for the bombings and warned of more attacks ahead of a May 29 presidential inauguration meant to set up the country’s first-ever handover of civilian power.

The militants claimed to have taken out the entire network of pipes leading to an Agip-operated terminal, which can export 200,000 barrels a day.

Nigeria has a total production capacity of 3 million barrels per day, but protests and militant attacks have reduced oil production by around 680,000 barrels before the bombings.

It was not immediately clear how much production had been cut by the attacks, since the Nigerian staff of Agip, a subsidiary of Italy’s oil giant Eni SpA, were on strike for a second day and company representatives in Italy said they were unable to comment.

Nearly 100 foreign oil workers have been kidnapped since the beginning of the year, including 29 last week.

Attacks in Nigeria often send ripples through markets already jittery over instability in the Middle East. The light, sweet crude that the west African country produces is much cheaper to refine than heavier oils and its proximity to North America cements its importance as the fifth-largest supplier to the United States.

The attacks also come on the heels of Nigeria’s presidential election in April, which put the country under an international spotlight following widespread evidence of vote-rigging.

The April polls, which President Olusegun Obasanjo’s ruling party won by a landslide, were characterised by violence and did not take place at all in many areas of the impoverished Delta region.

Many militant groups have issued statements saying they will not recognise the incoming government of the president-elect, Umaru Yar’Adua.

The attack is the largest since a pipeline blast in December 2005 when the same group, known by its acronym, MEND, took out nearly a quarter of Nigerian oil production.

If yesterday’s attack wiped out the full capacity of the three Agip pipes, it would mean Nigeria’s production has now been slashed by almost a third.

MEND says they are fighting for a greater share of oil revenues for the Delta, which generates tens of billions of dollars worth of crude annually.