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MANILA: The Philippine Embassy in Nigeria is looking
into the arrest of 15 Filipinos on Friday for allegedly stealing
crude oil from the Niger Delta, the Department of Foreign Affairs
said Saturday.
“We are looking into it. The
embassy in Abuja is sending people there,” said Foreign Affairs
department spokesman Claro Cristobal.
Embassy officials would also look
into statements by the Filipinos that they were victims of a pirate
attack rather than oil thieves, he said.
A Nigerian official earlier
confirmed that the Filipinos were arrested with a foreign vessel, MT
Lina Panama, laden with stolen crude at Brass as they attempted to
leave Nigerian territorial waters and were also shown to journalists
in Effurun, near Warri.
The Nation newspaper quoted Rev
Chavez, the ship’s captain, saying they knew nothing about the
stolen crude and had been attacked by suspected pirates in the
region.
Chavez told the paper that the
ship was traveling to Angola from Cotonou, the capital of Benin,
when armed men on two boats attacked the ship and locked the crew in
a room where they spent several hours before being found by the
Nigerian armed forces.
Theft of crude oil from the Niger
Delta by armed gangs, pirates and their foreign collaborators costs
Nigeria millions of dollars every year.
The past two years have seen an
upsurge in militant activities in the region with frequent attacks
on foreign oil companies and a wave of kidnappings of expatriate
employees.
Nigeria’s military also
arrested 11 suspects in a crackdown on Niger Delta militants whose
criminal activities have hurt the country’s oil production.
The militants were suspected to
be involved in stealing crude oil and other criminal activities in
the restive region.
Moroever, three unidentified
gunmen and one civilian were killed when militants attacked a navy
houseboat on the oil-rich Bonny Island. The soldiers were protecting
an Anglo-Dutch oil group facility there.
On Thursday, villagers in the
region blew up a key crude oil supply pipeline operated by Agip, the
Nigerian subsidiary of Italian group Eni, cutting 47,000 barrels a
day of oil output, according to Eni’s website.
--AFP
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