Controversy trails ransom, release of kidnapped U.S. crew

Controversy is trailing the payment of undisclosed amount in dollars as ransom for the release of two citizens of the United States kidnapped last month from a crude supply vessel off shore Nigeria. While the ABC News reported that the sailors were released after a ransom was paid following hostage negotiations, the US State Department, which confirmed the release insisted that no ransom was paid.
The captain and chief engineer of the Edison Chouest Offshore-owned platform supply vessel C-Retriever were released unharmed at the weekend and are on their way home, according to reports.

They were kidnapped in the Gulf of Guinea by unknown assailants on October 23, as their supply boat was reportedly on its way to Chevron’s oil-producing deep-water Agbami field off Bayelsa state.
“We welcome the release of the two US citizens,” the State Department said in a statement. “For privacy reasons, we will not provide any additional information.”
The State Department stressed that US policy does not allow the government to pay ransoms, nor does State “encourage the payment of ransom money.”

Private parties are not forbidden to pay ransoms, however.
Attacks by pirates off Nigeria have risen by a third in 2013, with as many as 15 attacks occurring this year alone within a 40 kilometre radius of the Agbami platform.

Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday that the U.S. would stride past Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s top oil producer in 2015.
The West’s energy agency said this, bringing Washington closer to energy self-sufficiency and reducing the need for OPEC supply.

But by 2020, the oilfields of Texas and North Dakota will be past their prime and the Middle East will regain its dominance – especially as a supplier to Asia.
A boom in shale oil in the United States has reversed a decline in its oil output and the IEA, adviser to industrialised nations, predicted in its 2012 World Energy Outlook the U.S. would surpass Riyadh as top producer in 2017.

Introducing this year’s outlook at a news conference in London on Tuesday, IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol said the agency now expects the re-ordering earlier.
“We expect in 2015 the U.S. to be the largest oil producer in the world,” he said.

“We see two chapters in the oil markets,” he told Reuters in an interview. “Up to 2020, we expect the light, tight oil to increase – I would call it a surge. And due to the increase coming from Brazil, the need for Middle East oil in the next few years will definitely be less.”