Lagos, Nigeria – A fire broke out at a major pipeline in southern Nigeria, Africa’s largest petrol producer, police said on Tuesday, adding they had arrested two people for questioning.
The force in Rivers State gave no details about the damage inflicted by the fire, which was discovered by security officers on a routine patrol at night who then shut down the pipeline in response.
“A fire incident occurred at the… Trans Niger Delta Pipeline, located at the border of Kpor and Bodo communities,” the Rivers State police said in a statement.
“Two individuals have been taken in for questioning as part of efforts to uncover any potential act of sabotage,” the police statement added.
The Trans Niger Pipeline transports crude oil from the oil fields of southern Nigeria’s Niger River Delta to the Bonny terminal for export.
Until last week its operator was British oil multinational Shell.
Following a takeover of Shell’s onshore assets in the Niger Delta, the pipeline’s management is now in the hands of the Renaissance Africa Energy consortium.
The consortium brings together Beninese-Gabonese businessman Samuel Dossou-Aworet’s Petrolin and four Nigerian oil companies.
Poor pipeline maintenance and acts of vandalism lead to frequent oil spills in the region.
Armed groups, as well as local residents, regularly syphon crude from pipelines belonging to the major oil companies, which they then refine at illegal sites and sell on the black market.
In the past five years Nigeria’s National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) has recorded around 3,8770 oil spills in the country, most of those in the Niger Delta region.
Despite the country’s vast petroleum wealth, most Nigerians live in grave poverty, while prices at the pump skyrocketed following President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s 2023 decision to end a costly fuel subsidy.
Many in the west African country regularly accuse the major oil companies of having polluted their region without helping it develop.
Decades of oil spills have devastated mangroves and entire villages, where fishing and farming once provided the main local source of income.
The Bodo community launched legal proceedings against Shell following oil spills in 2008, in a case which the British courts have yet to rule on.
© Agence France-Presse
