Femi Folaranmi, Yenagoa
A mysterious fire incident has forced the Aiteo group to shut down the Nembe Creek Trunk Line(NCTL) in Nembe, Bayelsa State.
The NCTL is a major oil facility in the Niger Delta region and its shut-down would have an adverse effect on the production of crude oil for Nigeria.
The media officer Ndiana Matthew in a statement which declared Force Majeure said through a third party is suspected to have being behind the fire incident, security operatives are on top of the situation.
Aiteo group which disclosed that the situation has been brought under control appealed to all stakeholders to remain calm as investigations into the incident continued.
The statement read in part because”We have been informed of a fire outbreak by our surveillance team comprising the JTF, FSS around NCTL RoW near Awoba today, 21 April 2019.
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.
The NCTL has, hitherto, enjoyed smooth operations preceding this incident founding suspicion that this fire may have occurred through an illegitimate, third-party breach of the functionality of the pipeline, critical national asset.
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 await further, detailed briefing in due course.”
