|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
by Peter Cunliffe-Jones
LAGOS, July 14 (AFP) - Nigeria's state-run oil company Friday admitted rogue officials might be involved in the illegal siphoning of fuel from pipelines that led to a pipeline blaze in which more than 250 died. "It is possible NNPC officials are involved in this vandalization. That is not ruled out," Ndu Ughamadu, group spokesman for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), told reporters. "Our engineers have told us that vandalization of oil pipelines takes a scientific process which ordinary villagers can't engage in," he said. "There must be well-placed people that have links with this pipeline vandalization. Where they have located a pipeline they will perforate holes and quietly they will lay pipelines for up to one kilometer where they siphon the fuel at will," he said. More than 250 people died when fire erupted in the early hours of Monday along a two-kilometer (1.2 mile) stretch of pipeline outside the city of Warri in southern Nigeria's Delta State. Professional fuel black marketeers had fractured the pipeline seven months ago, daily siphoning off vast quantities of fuel for sale, local residents said. At night, hundreds of villagers gathered to scoop up some of the fuel still spilling from the pipeline in buckets and jerry cans, and in the early hours on Monday, the whole thing exploded. Delta State Governor James Ibori on Wednesday charged that the pipeline operators, the NNPC wholly-owned fuel marketing subsidiary PPMC, had known for seven months that the pipeline had been fractured. "Much as the Delta State government would not want to apportion blame, there is reasonable evidence of either negligence or connivance on the part of those in charge of the supply lines," he charged. "According to my reports, the leakage had persisted since December last year when its first signs were observed by the PPMC," he said, quoted in different newspapers. "Certainly, seven months was more than enough time to have intervened positively to avert this major disaster," he said. The NNPC announced an internal inquiry Friday into the explosion. At the scene of the blaze, which was still burning on Thursday, a senior PPMC official denied the company had shown any negligence or been involved in any illegal tapping of pipelines. But residents and police in the area said fracturing of pipes and the black market sale of fuel went on with the full knowledge and involvement of NNPC and PPMC officials. The Nigerian government headed by President Olusegun Obasanjo has meanwhile yet to comment on the disaster. An official at the presidency in the federal capital, Abuja, told AFP that no inquiry had yet been launched by the government. "We are aware that there is an NNPC inquiry but there has been no decision yet on a federal or judicial inquiry," said the aide to Obasanjo, who asked not to be named. According to the PPMC, fuel pipelines were fractured by fuel thieves 497 times last year and around 200 times in the first quarter of this year alone. Nigerians blame the incidents on corruption in the NNPC and PPMC and the poverty of the people of the oil-producing region, the hub of the fuel pipeline network. |
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
