…Shell loses 130,000bpd to TNP closure
Ovie Okpare and ’Femi Asu
The attacks on oil and gas facilities in the Niger
Delta continued Thursday evening with the bombing
of a pipeline belonging to the Nigerian Petroleum
Development Company, a subsidiary of the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation.
Ovie Okpare and ’Femi Asu
The attacks on oil and gas facilities in the Niger
Delta continued Thursday evening with the bombing
of a pipeline belonging to the Nigerian Petroleum
Development Company, a subsidiary of the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation.
Sources told one of our correspondents that the
incident happened at 7:40pm around the Shalomi
Creek in Warri South-West Local Government Area of
Delta State.
Multiple security sources in the area confirmed the
incident to one of our correspondents at about
8:50pm.
No group, including the Niger Delta Avengers, which
has claimed responsibility for series of attacks on
oil facilities in the past, has claimed responsibility
for Thursday’s incident.
The commander, Nigerian Navy Ship (NNS) Delta,
Commodore Riami Mohammed, when contacted at
about 9:09pm, denied knowledge of the incident.
He promised to investigate and get back to our
correspondent but had yet to do so as of the time
of filing this report.
But a senior military officer, who spoke on
condition anonymity because he was not authorised
to speak on the issue, confirmed the development.
The source said details of the incident were still
sketchy due to the time it took place.
The Niger Delta Avengers had earlier on Thursday
threatened to secede from the country, saying that
successive governments had been unfair to the
people of the Niger Delta region.
It said that what the people of the Niger Delta had
been asking for from successive governments in
Nigeria was the provision of basic amenities and
inclusiveness.
The group called on the international community,
especially Britain, France, United States, Russia and
China not to allow the region to go the way of
Sudan.
In a statement issued by its spokesperson,
Murdoch Agbinibo, the NDA maintained that all that
successive governments wanted was the flow of
crude oil from the region and not its development.
It vowed to remedy the age-long devastation
against the region with every means necessary.
It said in the statement, “Since the amalgamation of
Nigeria in 1914 to date, our resources have been
used to sustain the political administrative livewire
of Nigeria to the exclusion of the Niger Delta.
“Finally, we are calling on the international
community to come and support the restoration of
our right to peaceful self-determination from this
tragedy of 1914 that has expired since 2014.
“We want our resources back to restore the essence
of human life in our region for generations to come
because Nigeria has failed to do that. The world
should not wait until we go the Sudan way. Enough
is enough.
“This history of terror, we the Niger Delta Avengers
will resist and correct with every means necessary.
We have nothing to lose in the battle ahead.”
It added, “Justice, they say, is only found within the
structure of a nation state; rather than provide
justice, the Nigerian government has decided to
mobilise her military might to intimidate, torture,
maim, victimise and bombard a section of the
nation and her citizenry to allow the free flow of our
oil.
“Since the day crude oil was discovered in
commercial quantity and quality in Oloibiri in the
present day Bayelsa State, what we have being
asking from successive governments in Nigeria is
potable drinking water, electricity, roads,
employment, quality education, resource control and
inclusive governance.”
The threat of secession came just as crude oil
production in the country suffered further threats
with the Trans Niger Pipeline, one of two major
pipelines transporting the Bonny Light crude grade
for export, being shut.
The TNP, which is operated by Shell Petroleum
Development Company of Nigeria Limited, was shut
on Wednesday after a leak was found, a Shell
spokesperson told one of our correspondents on
Thursday.
“We are conducting a joint investigation visit
comprising officials of the SPDC, the regulators and
the communities to determine the cause of the leak
and the volume affected,” he said.
One source referring to a memo sent out to
participants in the TNP said it was expected to be
down for at least a week and would see around
130,000 barrels per day of production shut-in,
according to Reuters.
The shutdown comes just as repairs were
completed on the Nembe Creek Trunk Line that also
moves the major export grade.
In early May, force majeure, a legal clause that
allows companies to cancel or delay deliveries due
to unforeseen circumstances, was declared by
Royal Dutch Shell on Bonny Light exports after the
NCTL was closed.
The TNP transports around 180,000 barrels of
crude oil per day to the Bonny Export Terminal and
is part of the gas liquids evacuation infrastructure,
critical for continued domestic power generation at
the Afam VI power plant, and liquefied gas exports,
Shell said on its website.
The United States’ Energy Information
Administration on Thursday said the massive
wildfire in Canada, militant attacks on oil facilities
in Nigeria, political strife in Libya and power
outages complicated by bad weather in Iraq cut an
average of 3.6 million barrels of oil a day from the
global crude supply in May.
The EIA said May’s unplanned disruptions were the
largest since the agency began tracking the date in
2011.
The wildfire in Canada’s oil sands region knocked
an average of 800,000 bpd out of production, with a
peak disruption of 1.1 million barrels. Production
began coming back online earlier this month.
Nigeria’s production averaged a drop of 800,000
bpd in May as militant attacks increased on oil and
natural gas facilities. Production from the country
fell to its lowest level since the 1980s, according
to the EIA.
