Uche Usim, Abuja
Aiteo, an indigenous oil firm on Tuesday confirmed that the fire incident reported within its Right of Way (ROW) of the Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL) on 21 April 2019 has been completely put out.
Ndiana Matthew, the Corporate Communications Manager of the company said security team from Aiteo conducted further inspections at various times on Monday.
“In line with regulatory requirements, a Joint Investigation Visit (JIV) comprising security and regulatory agencies, community representatives and Aiteo personnel will be constituted and deployed to the site to attend to the necessary incident formalities. This team is expected at the incident site imminently.
“The Joint Task Force (JTF) has confirmed that sabotage of the pipeline at Awoba, Rivers State, was responsible. JTF has also identified some culprits and is set to take necessary action”, he explained.
Mathew added that Aiteo was working on further site preparation and mobilisation of specialised equipment to the swamps for further remedial action to facilitate a quick return to full functionality.
Recall there was fire outbreak around NCTL RoW near Awoba on 21 April 2019.
The company’s emergency response team was immediately activated and following its urgent intervention and containment action, it was constrained to shut in injection as well as other related operations into the NCTL.
In accordance with standard procedure, Aiteo 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.
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.