Some oil companies have shut down their operations in some oilfields in the western part of Niger Delta, following vandalization of the Trans Forcados pipeline, ThisDay reports.
The companies are: Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), Seplat Petroleum Development Company and four other Nigerian companies comprising Shoreline Resources Limited, Neconde, First Hydrocarbon Nigeria (FHN) and Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
The Trans Forcados Pipeline (TFP), conveys crude oil produced by these companies from the producing fields to the Forcados Export Terminal.
Vandals had earlier damaged the pipeline, resulting to the shutdown of crude oil production by these companies from late December 2014 to the first week of January 2015, before they struck again in the first week of March and more recently, the last week of April to the first week of May.
“Once Trans Forcados is down, all of us suffer. In 2014 we budgeted 35 days of outage but we ended up suffering 75 days of outage. In the first 30 days of this year, we have already suffered 15 days of outage. So, the Trans Forcados remains a huge problem for all of us, producers in the western Niger Delta, who deliver crude to Forcados. When it is down, everybody suffers; we have production outage and therefore, for the period, there is no production for the country,” CEO of Seplat, Mr. Austin Avuru said.
Shell had earlier declared force majeure on Forcados crude oil stream, effectively disrupting the export of 189,000 barrels per day, following what it described as “series of leaks” in the Trans Forcados Pipeline.
