A Nigerian militant group on Wednesday claimed responsibility for kidnapping five South Korean workers from a natural gas plant operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN), in the Niger Delta.
In an email to Dow Jones Newswires, Jomo Gbomo, spokesman for the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), said the attack was in response to the continued detention of former Mujahideen Dokubo-Asari, leader of the ethnic militant group - the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, who is in detention for alleged treason.
The MEND email said the five South Korean workers, in the employ of Daewoo Engineering and Construction Co. (047040.SE) and Korea Gas Corp. (036460.SE), were in “good health” and have been taken to a MEND base.
The two companies are contractors for Shell. An official for Shell Nigeria has confirmed that the company shut down its Cawthorne Channel gas plant in the eastern Niger Delta following the attack by armed men early Wednesday morning. He said the gas plant has a capacity of 150 million cubic feet of gas a day. A spokeswoman for Shell in London said the company is taking steps to ensure the safety of its staff, its contracting staff and locals. She said gas from the Cawthorne plant feeds into the Bonny Island liquified natural gas project, but it is a small proportion of the total supply.
MEND also said its members engaged in a firefight with the Nigerian military and said it sank a military boat, killing six soldiers on board. This couldn’t be independently verified. The group said it intends to step up its attacks on oil facilities “in the next few weeks.”
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it planned to do its utmost to bring the victims home unharmed. Daewoo official, Huh Hyun, said it appeared money was the motive for the kidnapping and that the company would negotiate with the captors. The official declined to discuss further details.
The kidnappings came on the heels of a visit to South Korea this week by Edmund Daukoru, Nigeria’s oil minister, to meet with officials in the government and oil industry to promote investment in Nigeria’s oil sector.
Source:MarketWatch
Tags: Nigeria, Oil, South Korea, Kidnapping
i am bitter when will this stop?OBJ PLEASE DO SOMETHING. WE CAN’T CONTINUE LIKE THIS? LIVES ARE LOST EVERYDAY FROM ATTACKS. DO SOMETHING FOR THE INDIGENES. IF THEY ARE TAKEN CARE OF WELL they won’t take up arms and start killing. why should innocent souls just serving the fatherland become sacrificial lambs i don’t get it. the oil revenue is more than enough to change the whole of the niger delta region. HOW DO YOU EXPECT A MAN TO PROVIDE FOR HIS FAMILY WHEN HIS SOURCE OF LIVELIHOOD HAS BEEN CUT OFF.