Aiteo Oil and Gas on Tuesday confirmed that the fire outbreak which occurred on Sunday along its Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL) in Bayelsa State had been put out.
The spokesman of the oil firm, Ndiana Matthew,who disclosed this to newsmen in statement, said that a security team deployed in the impacted facility conducted further inspections at various times on Monday and confirmed that the fire was totally contained.
According to him,the Joint Task Force on security team has confirmed that sabotage of the pipeline at Awoba was responsible; and has identified some culprits, and is set to act as is necessary.
The statement read in part: “In line with regulatory requirements, a Joint Investigation Visit (JIV) comprising security and regulatory agencies as well as community representatives and Aiteo personnel will be constituted and deployed to the site to attend to the necessary incident formalities.
“This team is expected at the incident site imminently.
“Aiteo is working on further site preparation and mobilisation of specialised equipment to the swamps for further remedial action to facilitate a quick return to full functionality.
“Further information will be made available as soon as these occur.”
The company had on Sunday declared a force majeure on the fire incident, which community people said emanated from the Aiteo pipeline.
It stated in a statement that it had immediately sent an emergency response team after it was informed of a fire outbreak by the surveillance team.
“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,” Aiteo said.
