Lagos — FOR the first time since the crisis in the Niger- Delta snowballed into a development with implications for global pricing of crude oil and gas, oil prices fell, early last week, despite news that three foreign oil workers had been kidnapped in the region amid signs of escalation.

Oil futures had risen more than $1 a barrel, Friday, on a U.S. warning that Nigerian militants might be planning to expand their activities beyond the restive southern petroleum-producing regions. Scores of foreign workers have been kidnapped in the Niger-Delta region since January.

Police had announced an American oil worker kidnapped last month in Nigeria had been released. But, early last week, authorities said three Croatian workers were snatched late Sunday in Port Harcourt, the main city in Nigeria's troubled southern oil region.

Coming on the heels of this development, the American embassy issued a warning that the separatist guerillers operating in the area were planning to expand their attacks beyond the Niger-Delta.

When contacted, an operative of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said plans to carry out attacks outside the Niger Delta has been on the cards for quite a while now.

"The militants are well aware that President Olusegun Obasanjo wants to stay beyond the May 29th hand over date and they wouldn't want him to seize the opportunity presented by such an escal ation of the conflict in the Delta,"

Light, sweet crude for March delivery lost 44 cents to $58.98 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange by afternoon in Europe. April Nymex crude dropped 7 cents to $59.79 a barrel. Trading was quiet in Asia due to the Lunar New Year holidays.

April Brent crude oil futures on London's ICE futures exchange lost 11 cents to $58.84 a barrel.

Heating oil futures dropped nearly a cent to $1.6647 a gallon while natural gas prices rose 8.6 cents to $7.589 per 1,000 cubic feet.

"The market is melting," said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago. "Once again, traders are declaring the end to winter - which is the third time they've declared it this winter and that's putting pressure on the market."

Bitter cold temperatures in the first weeks of February helped oil prices rally from a low of $49.90 on January 18 after an unseasonably warm January.

Iran's Oil Minister said, Saturday, that the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) would not institute any further cut in its output ceiling at its March meeting in Vienna if the price of crude oil maintains its current upward trend.

"If the (price) trend remains as so, there will probably be no additional cut proposed over the 500,000 barrels a day that went into effect in February," Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh said on the sidelines of an international refining forum in Tehran.

OPEC oil ministers will meet in mid-March in Vienna to decide the cartel's oil output in the second quarter of the year. OPEC decided, in December, to cut production by 500,000 barrels a day from February 1, which followed a cut of 1.2 million barrels a day in November in order to stem falling oil prices.

OPEC's new Secretary-General, Abdulla Salem el-Badri, said in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires on Friday that adherence to cuts was good and that the market was stable.

He said it was his personal opinion that the reference price of 11 crude oils should, at a minimum, be in the range. of $55-$60 a barrel.