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Gunmen kidnapped nine foreign oil workers and a Nigerian colleague from a ship off the coast of Nigeria on Friday (May 25), police said. Shots were fired during the abduction by suspected militants in two speedboats, which took place off the coast of the Niger Delta near the Brass crude oil export terminal. A strike by union members in the national oil company and the Department of Petroleum Resources, the industry regulator, began on Thursday (May 24) to protest against the privatisation of the country's largest oil refinery. Oil industry sources confirmed that many inspectors had already been withdrawn from oil tanker terminals, which ship about 2.1 million barrels a day, but exports had not been disrupted yet. The 10 men were seized a day after gunmen kidnapped a Polish engineer near the oil city of Warri, also in the Niger Delta, a vast wetlands region which is home to Africa's largest oil industry. Abductions for ransom or to press political demands are frequent in the poverty-stricken region, where there is widespread resentment against an industry that has extracted billions of dollars in oil wealth but left most people living in poverty. Oil production from Nigeria, the world's eighth biggest exporter, is down by about 700,000 barrels per day or almost a quarter because of an 18-month surge in violence. About 100 foreigners have been kidnapped this year and released unharmed after their employers paid ransoms.