Four foreign oil workers have been kidnapped from an offshore oilfield in Nigeria operated by Royal Dutch Shell.
The hostages - an American, Briton, Honduran and Bulgarian - were working on a ship servicing the EAoilfield, a few miles off the coast of the southern Niger Delta, when they were seized yesterday.
"A support vessel was invaded by armed men and four persons were abducted," a Shell spokesman said. He declined to say whether output from the 120,000-barrels-per-day field had been curtailed.
An industry source said the process of shutting down the field had begun.
Shell has been in a long-standing dispute with some militant groups based in villages close to the EA field and has experienced attacks there in the past.
