Sola Adebayo, Warri

The staff pull-out coincided with mounting pressure on the Delta State Government from the home governments of the nine hostages seized by militants last week.

The foreign governments reportedly wanted the state government to speed up the process of getting the hostages freed, unharmed.

Shell’s evacuation of its staff followed the abduction of the expatriates and destruction of oil installations. The evacuation continued on Thursday.

Although, SPDC did not officially give the number of workers that have been withdrawn, investigations showed that 854 staff were from various offshore locations in its Western Division in Delta State, and the E. A. Fields in Bayelsa State.

The SPDC management had after a meeting in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, on Sunday night shut down all its production facilities in the areas, resulting in production cutback of 455,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

A subsidiary of the Dutch firm, SNEPCO, also shut down its Sea Eagle Production and evacuated the staff for precautionary reason.

A memorandum by the SPDC’s management on Thursday acknowledged that the militants had suspended hostilities against its interests.

A reliable source in the Emergency Response Command in the SPDC, a unit set up to handle the crisis and evacuate the staff, confirmed in Warri on Thursday that 854 employees had been withdrawn.

The Emergency Response Commander of the SPDC, Mr. Joe Obiohu, could not be reached for comment.

But in a memo to all staff in Lagos, Warri, Port Harcourt and Abuja, on Thursday, Obiohu said the evacuation of field personnel was ongoing.

Investigations by our correspondent on Thursday revealed that diplomats attached to the missions of the embattled expatriates in Nigeria had visited Ibori, to ascertain when their nationals would be freed.

Some of the officials are those of the British High Commission as well as the embassies of the United States of America, Egypt and Thailand.

Our correspondent gathered that the pressure from the foreign countries might have informed the decision by Ibori to relocate temporarily to Warri.

The governor met behind closed doors on Thursday with the Deputy High Commissioner in charge of the British High Commission in Lagos, Mr. Peter Waterworth.

A reliable source at the meeting, told our correspondent that Waterworth said the British Government was demanding accelerated action to free the hostages.

But the Press Secretary to the governor, Mr. Sunny Areh, denied that the state was under pressure from foreign countries.

He said, “The government is doing its best to see that the hostages were set free in the next few days.”

THE PUNCH, Friday, February 24, 2006