• Tools:
• Save |
• Print |
• E-mail |
• Most Popular |

4 Americans abducted off Nigeria's coast

Adjust font size:

LAGOS, Nigeria (CNN) -- Four Americans working off the coast of southern Nigeria were abducted by unknown kidnappers overnight, an oil company official said Wednesday.

According to Chevron spokesman Femi Odumabo, the U.S. nationals were working on a construction barge near Chevron's Escravos oil export terminal in the Niger Delta and are employees of Global Industries Ltd, a Chevron subcontractor.

Odumabo said they were laying pipes for Chevron at Okan oil field.

There has been a wave of kidnappings of foreign workers in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Since late 2005, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) militants have carried out numerous attacks on Nigeria's oil sector and abducted dozens of foreign workers, releasing nearly all of them unharmed.

Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer. In 2005, it was the world's sixth-largest exporter of oil, but the conflict there has cut distribution by an estimated 500,000 barrels per day, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Get up-to-the minute news from CNN CNN.com gives you the latest stories and video from the around the world, with in-depth coverage of U.S. news, politics, entertainment, health, crime, tech and more.

---

• Brazil man attends own funeral
• Djokovic stuns Federer in Swiss final
• Can cloud ships and space sun shades fix the planet?
• Haye targets meeting with Klitschko
• House passes health care bill

• Irish PM to quit over payments scandal
• NATO chief: Afghan troop increase likely
• Militants hunted as calm retuns to Basra
• Pressure on Bush to skip Olympics
• BA sending misplaced T5 baggage to Milan

• Recruiting suicide bombers (2:50)
• London was lucky (2:36)
• Cars in London rigged as bombs (3:48)
• Second explosives-packed car foun (2:32)
• Soviet culture returns (3:47)