The Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL), one of the two
major pipelines transporting Nigeria’s Bonny light crude oil blend, has been
shut down by its operator, Aiteo Eastern E and P Company Limited.
The 97 kilometre-long line which reportedly has the
capacity to transport up to 150,000 barrels of oil per day, was forced to be
closed by Aiteo on account of a suspected third-party breach which resulted in
a fire outbreak.
In February, Aiteo was forced to shut down the line
due to what it said was an undisclosed outage. However, in a statement which
was signed by its media representative, Ndiana Matthew, and made available to
the media on Sunday in Abuja, the company said a security surveillance discovered
a fresh breach on the line.
“We have been informed of a fire outbreak by our
surveillance team comprising the JTF, FSS around NCTL RoW near Awoba today.
“Our operations emergency response team was
immediately activated, and following its urgent intervention and containment
action, we are constrained to shut in injection as well as other related
operations into the NCTL. In accordance
with standard procedure, we requested the other injectors to do the same,” said
the statement.
Aieto stated further that “the NCTL has, hitherto,
enjoyed smooth operations preceding this incident which is of the suspicion that
this fire may have occurred through an illegitimate, third-party breach of the
functionality of the pipeline.
“In the meantime, the relevant investigations are
continuing while further information about the remote and direct causes of the
fire will be communicated as soon as these become available. We ask our stakeholders to wait for further
detailed briefing in due course,” it added while not disclosing when the line
would be back on.
No comments:
Post a Comment