By Tife Owolabi
YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) – Nigerian oil firm Renaissance Energy has halted production on one line feeding into the Trans Niger oil pipeline, a major oil artery transporting crude from onshore oilfields to the Bonny export terminal, following an operational incident, it said on Friday.
An environmental rights group said on Thursday that the pipeline burst on May 6 and spilled oil into the local B-Dere community in Ogoniland, the second such incident affecting the pipeline in two months.
The halted pipeline goes through B-Dere community to join the Trans Niger Pipeline.
Nigerian oil consortium Renaissance Group, which now owns Shell’s former onshore subsidiary that operates the pipeline, “immediately isolated the pipeline and halted production into the line”, Michael Adande, spokesperson for Renaissance said.
“With co-operation from the B-Dere community, our experts accessed the site, clamped the pipeline and recovered spilled oil, with clean-up preparations now underway,” Adande said.
Renaissance said a team of investigators had confirmed that the incident was an operational one.
The Trans Niger Pipeline (TNP), with a capacity of around 450,000 barrels per day, is one of two conduits that export Bonny Light crude from Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer. (This story has been corrected to say that only one line was halted and not the entire Trans Niger Pipeline in paragraph 1)
(Reporting by Tife Owolabi; Writing by Chijioke Ohuocha; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
