Pirates kidnap two American sailors off Nigeri

Pirates kidnap two American sailors off
Nigeria
on october 24, 2013 at 5:03 pm in news
LAGOS (AFP) – Pirates have stormed an oil supply
vessel off southern Nigeria and kidnapped the
ship’s captain and chief engineer, both US citizens,
a private security firm and US officials said
Thursday.
A US-flagged C-Retriever owned by American oil
servicing company Edison Chouest Offshore was
attacked on Wednesday off the city of Brass, said
AKE, a London-headquartered private security firm.
“Both the chief engineer and the captain were
kidnapped,” Richard Fylon of AKE said. “They are
both American.”
US defence officials in Washington, who requested
anonymity, confirmed the details.
The US Navy and the Marine Corps had not yet
received orders to intervene, two US defense
officials told AFP.
An official at AKE’s Lagos office said this was the
first reported kidnapping of US nationals around the
oil-producing Niger Delta region in at least two
years.
The official, who requested anonymity, said the
same area was attacked by pirates earlier this
week, but that there appeared to have been no
increase in naval patrols operating in the area.
Police spokesman Alex Akhigbe in Bayelsa state,
where Brass is located, told AFP he had no details
on the raid.
Nigeria’s navy was not available to comment.
The kidnapping of foreigners working in the oil
sector was once a common occurence in the delta.
Abductions declined dramatically after a 2009
amnesty deal with rebels in the region, but they
have spiked again in recent months.
Oil servicing ships have repeatedly been hit around
the Gulf of Guinea, which includes the waters off
Nigeria, Togo, Benin and parts of Ghana.
Sailors of varying nationalities have been taken
hostage, but typically released days or weeks later.
Most analysts say that ransoms are paid in such
cases, but the companies involved and Nigerian
officials rarely comment on payments to
kidnappers.
In a report released last month, the Risk Intelligence
security firm said pirates in the gulf have
increasingly sought to rob international vessels over
the last two years.
There are signs that the region’s pirates have
become bolder and developed more sophisticated
attack methods, the report said.
The Lagos-based AKE official, citing recent attack
patterns, said the raid on the American-owned C-
Retriever was likely carried out by gunmen on board
two or three speed boats, with four attackers on
board each boat.
The US navy, along with forces from Britain, Spain
and The Netherlands last week conducted a joint
training exercise with Nigeria’s navy to curb piracy
in the region.
Nigeria is Africa’s top oil producer, generating some
two million barrels per day from onshore and
deepwater fields in the Niger Delta, which falls
along the Gulf of Guinea.