• Engineers demand adherence to professional standards
Rising cases of oil spill and loss of nation’s crude oil have been attributed to ageing pipelines laid by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) and other oil companies over 40 years ago without maintenance.
This comes as the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) asked the Federal Government and operators in the oil sector to enforce local content and professional standards in pipelines installation, stressing that non-professionals from other countries are being paraded as experts in the country.
The stakeholders, speaking at the Nigeria International Pipeline Technology and Security Conference in Abuja, said Nigeria needed to find an innovative way to address the pipeline crisis for crude, petroleum products and gas.
With NNPC’s over 5,120 kilometres of pipelines in shambles, most operators in downstream have over the years relied on trucks, which have consistently killed thousands of people, destroy properties and leave an age-long term environmental disaster.
Besides, most operators in the upstream are also adopting the truck option to lift crude, even as the country is battling with low crude oil production and over $40 per barrel oil production.
According to Principal Consultant, Amelin Energy Limited, Eloho Amagada, with pipelines in Nigeria being over 40 years, Nigeria is facing vulnerability to leaks and bursts.
Amagada noted that aging infrastructure was a major cause of oil spills accounting for about 50 per cent of all spill incidents in the country. He noted that regulatory weakness was adding to the worsening state of pipelines in the country, even as only 30 per cent of pipelines received scheduled maintenance in the country.
Chief Operating Officer at Geoplex DrillTeq, Akintunde Fadare, citing reports from the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, lamented that an estimated 400,000 barrels of crude oil were stolen daily, translating to significant revenue shortfalls.
Fadare said countries worldwide were adopting advanced strategies to enhance pipeline security, with technology playing a pivotal role and as such, Nigeria should move towards this direction.
President of NSE, Margaret Oguntala, while decrying the involvement of unprofessional foreigners in laying pipelines, said there was a need to prioritise local content in addressing the challenges with pipelines in the country.
Oguntala noted that advancements in technology, including real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, must be implemented to enable early fault detection, reducing downtime, and minimising accidents.
