24 October 2013, Lagos – Two US crew members have been snatched from an offshore support vessel and an unknown number of soldiers shot dead in two incidents off Nigeria, according to reports.
The master and chief engineer of a vessel, said to be Edison Chouest Offshore’s C-Retriever, were abducted off the coast of Brass on Wednesday, reports from gCaptain and Reuters claim.
Reuters cited a US defence official as saying the State Department and the FBI were leading a response to the abductions.
Nobody was immediately available for comment at the US ship owner on Thursday morning local time.
In what appears to be a separate incident, gCaptain also reported that militants attacked a Nigerian Joint Task Force security boat off Brass on Thursday, killing all the personnel on board and taking weapons.
The International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Centre has not been able to get independent verification of either incident.
Edison is one of the most active offshore support vessel operators in Nigeria and, consequently, has suffered previous security incidents.
In November 2011, three crew members were taken from the Edison-owned C-Endeavour off Nigeria as it worked for US supermajor Chevron on the Agbami field. They were later released.
– Upstream
