Nigeria Oil Rig Hostages to Be Freed

Striking Nigerian oil workers have agreed to release nearly 100 foreigners held on four offshore rigs for over two weeks, it was reported today.

"Everybody is expected to be moving home from this evening, depending on logistics," Joseph Akilanja, the deputy president of the umbrella Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), told the Reuters news agency.

"We have just agreed. The company representatives, the NLC and all stakeholders including representatives of the striking workers have agreed."

Since April 16 about 100 Nigerian oil workers have been holding the hostages - including 35 Britons, 17 Americans and two Canadians - aboard the rigs, stationed about 20 miles off Nigeria's south-western coast.

Despite the region's rich petroleum stores, most of its residents remain desperately poor. Sabotage and hostage-takings by groups demanding compensation for land use and alleged environmental damage are relatively common in the southern Niger delta, where nearly all of Nigeria's oil is drilled.

The strikers had previously allowed at least 32 detained workers to leave, including an electrician who suffered a nervous breakdown and another man whose wife was seriously ill.

Management and union leaders held fresh talks today aimed at defusing the strike. Talks earlier this week stalled when the rigs' owner, Texas-based Transocean, world's biggest offshore oil drilling contractor, and the workers' representatives failed to agree on the fate of five Nigerian employees fired last month.

Peter Akpatason, president of Nigeria's largest oil workers' union, said the main concern at today's talks was to get the expatriates off the rigs.

Some hostages had expressed fears that their captors would kill them or blow up the rigs if Nigerian authorities tried to free them with armed raids.

Hundreds of Nigerian workers are also on the rigs, some due for crew rotation since members of the junior oil workers' union, Nupeng, launched their strike.