Nigerian oil-rig captives freed

news.com.au From a correspondent in Port Harcourt, Nigeria May 4, 2003

HUNDREDS of hostages have left the offshore oil rigs where striking Nigerian oil workers held them captive for weeks - signalling a peaceful end to the standoff. Some essential staff would remain behind on the four oil-drilling platforms, but "everyone else, they are departing in phases over (today) and the weekend," said Guy Cantwell, spokesman for rig owners Transocean Inc, based in Houston.

The evacuation "is continuing and we are going to do it as quickly as we can", he said.

Many of the 170 Nigerian and 97 expatriate hostages - which included 35 Britons, 17 Americans and two Canadians - travelled together with their 100 captors on boats and helicopters to port cities around Nigeria's oil-rich southern coast today.

Cantwell said all the expatriate workers had already left the installations, 40km off Nigeria's southern coast.

The Nigerian oil workers held their captives since launching a wildcat strike on April 19 over grievances with Transocean's management.

Company officials and the striking workers' representatives negotiated the release yesterday, after which the first captive was soon freed.

The strikers have demanded the reinstatement of fired workers and that they be transported to the rigs by helicopters, not boats.

Their principal concerns will be addressed at a later date, according to a communique issued after yesterday's talks.

Sweaty and bedraggled, the released hostages told of threats, tedium and discomfort, but no one was immediately known to have been injured by their Nigerian captors.

"It was tense at the start, but the last few days weren't bad," said Mark Richards, from Portsmouth in the United Kingdom, who arrived at this southern port city in one of at least two ferryboats, each carrying about 20 people. "There was some intimidation," said Richards.

"This was not that bad," said Luis Peraza, from Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, after hopping from a helicopter at Port Harcourt's airport.

"Sometimes it's worse," said Peraza, who has been onboard two other rigs during strikes by Nigerians.

Two other helicopters said to be carrying hostages were seen in Warri, another port town.

A Nigerian labour official who helped negotiate the hostages' freedom said he believed all captives were expected to leave the rigs today.

The rigs are drilling wells on behalf of multinationals Shell and TotalFinaElf.

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

Despite the region's vast petroleum stores, most of its residents remain desperately poor. Nigeria is one of the world's largest oil exporters and the fifth-largest producer of US oil imports. The Associated Press