KIDNAPPERS have freed six Russian sailors and an Estonian who had been abducted from a ship off Nigeria's southern delta, a French oil and gas services company says.
Paris-based Bourbon SA said in a statement that the sailors were in good health despite facing "difficult conditions while in captivity". The company said the men would leave Nigeria in several days after undergoing medical tests and psychological examinations.
The company statement said Bourbon would not take any questions regarding the sailors' release on Wednesday and did not say if a ransom had been paid to free them.
Typically, foreign companies operating in Nigeria's Niger Delta pay cash ransoms to free their employees after negotiating down kidnappers' demands. Foreign hostages can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece.
Military spokesman Lt. Col. Onyema Nwachukwu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The kidnapping happened during an attack October 15 on a Bourbon ship near the Niger Delta, where the company works closely with oil companies like Chinese-owned Addax Petroleum. Gunmen apparently attacked the Bourbon Liberty 249 and seized the sailors before escaping, the company said.
Another nine sailors onboard the vessel sailed safely away to the company's port in Onne in Nigeria's Rivers state, the company said.
The attack occurred near the Pennington River off Bayelsa state, military officials later said. That's close to the Pennington Export Terminal run by US-based Chevron Corp., which loads crude onto large oil tankers for export to the West.
Foreign oil companies have pumped oil out of the Niger Delta, a region of mangroves and swamps the size of Portugal, for more than 50 years. Despite the billions of dollars flowing into Nigeria's government, many in the delta remain desperately poor, living in polluted waters without access to proper medical care, education or work. The poor conditions sparked an uprising in 2006 by militants and opportunistic criminals who blew up oil pipelines and kidnapped foreign workers.
That violence ebbed in 2009 with a government-sponsored amnesty program that offered ex-fighters monthly payments and job training. However, few in the delta have seen the promised benefits and sporadic kidnappings and attacks continue. The last major kidnapping happened in August, when gunmen attacked a vessel operated by Sea Trucks Group, another oil and gas contractor, and abducted four workers. The workers were later released unharmed.
Bourbon operates support vessels for offshore oil rigs and provides repair, inspection and maintenance services for undersea oil fields, and has a smaller unit that ships commodities like coal, grain and timber worldwide. The company had revenues of 1 billion euros ($A1.26 billion) last year.
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