Royal Dutch Shell said on Wednesday that it is working to plug a leak in an oil pipeline located in Nigeria that was caused by saboteurs, media reports say.
The company was forced to shut down its 70,000 barrel-per-day Nembe Creek pipeline in the Niger Delta due to the incident, Tony Okonedo, a company spokesperson stated to Nigeria’s The Nation newspaper. The pipeline was closed down in late December.
Okonedo,said that oil thieves placed valves at two different spots in the pipeline. More than 200 barrels of spilled oil resulting from the sabotage have been recovered, the company says.
Shell “confirmed the leak on the 90-kilometre [55-mile] line and quickly shut in some producing flow stations, while also isolating the facility,” Okonedo said.
A spokesperson with Shell’s corporate department in Sub-Saharan Africa, Tony Attah, said that the thieves’ latest attempt to steal oil from Nigerian pipelines is “worrying.” Oil stealing and pipeline tampering is rampant across the Niger Delta, which is criss-crossed with numerous pipelines.
“It happened on a facility which was inaugurated in October 2009 to replace an old line, which was repeatedly targeted by crude oil thieves,” he told the Nation. “Sadly, the crude thieves continue to hinder efforts to maintain the integrity of key national oil and gas assets.”
Shell said that it was also trying to fix a leak at the Bonga oilfield facility, following a loading accident. The spill is the largest leak in Nigeria in the past 13 years and forced the company to close down the field.
