Foreign Oil Workers in Nigeria Still Happen to be Kidnapped

Three Filipino oil workers were kidnapped in southern Nigeria's petroleum-producing Niger Delta region, Nigerian police spokesman said Friday.

"A group of gunmen intercepted their car, shot their tire, fired into the air and took three Filipinos away in a speedboat," said the spokeswoman.

The kidnapping occurred just one day after a German oil worker was taken away by a group of about 10 armed men dressed in camouflage uniforms on early Thursday in Port Harcourt, the capital of Nigeria 's southern state of Rivers.

According to the police spokesman, who refused to be identified, this was the eighth kidnapping since the beginning of this year in the oil-rich, but trouble-torn region.

The three Filipinos worked for the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Complex in Bonny, a coastal town not far from the Gulf of Guinea.

Kidnappings of foreign oil workers and attacks on oil facilities by militant youths since the beginning of this year have forced Nigeria, the largest oil producer in Africa or the world's sixth largest oil exporter, to cut production by 670,000 barrels per day, or 26 percent of its crude production