Nigeria’s Nembe Creek Trunk Line, one of the two major lines transporting Bonny Light crude oil, was shut on Sunday after a fire prompted a force majeure, operator Aiteo said.
Aiteo said its emergency response team was activated once it was notified of the fire, and it was forced to shut the line.
The line was operating smoothly before the incident, fuelling suspicion that the fire could have been caused by a third party breach on the pipeline, Aiteo said.
The causes of the fire are being investigated, a company spokesman said in a statement. Aiteo did not provide details of any disruption to oil exports.
Meanwhile, the company announced on Monday that its Operations Emergency Response team was able to instantly contain the fire outbreak around NCTL near Awoba.
The company made this known in a statement by its media contact, Mr. Ndiana Matthew titled “Force Majure: Nembe Creek Trunk Line Fire Incident.”
The statement noted: “We have been informed of a fire outbreak by our surveillance team comprising the JTF, FSS around NCTL RoW near Awoba April 21, 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 same.”
Continuing, the statement added that NCTL had, 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.
According to the statement, “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.”