Date Published: 06/01/11

Uduaghan warns illegal oil bunkerers

DELTA State governor, Emmanuel Uduaghan, warned, on Tuesday, that his administration would not condone wanton destruction of oil pipelines by illegal oil bunkerers and warned perpetrators to henceforth desist from such deadly act.

Speaking when he visited the scene of pipeline fire incident at a section of Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) at Eko-Ovwore-Amukpe in Sapele Local Government Area, he advised those going into the illegal business to have a rethink.

“I want to advise those going into bunkering that we should stop all these pipeline vandalisation. If you want to make money illegally, it causes a lot of damages. You cause harm to yourself and to other people”, Uduaghan reasoned.

He said he had to visit the scene because of media reports on casualties recorded in the said fire explosion.

He thanked God that the security agencies assured him that there no deaths resulted from the incident.

Governor Uduaghan, however, acknowledged that the cause of the fire was as a result of illegal oil bunkering noting “the cause of the fire was purely a bunkering business which we must discourage”.

He noted that the visit was not his first to the scene of the incident recalling that as the former Secretary to the State Government, he had once been to the scene because of illegal bunkering activities which also resulted to fire.

Uduaghan said that government would continued to put necessary security measure in place to check mate the activities of pipeline vandals adding “we will put in place a new strategy to fortify the security of pipelines in the state.

He was told earlier by heads of security agencies in Sapele that there were no reported death resulting from the fire incident by the people of the area except for a missing person who was yet to be linked with the incident.

They also said it took the fore fighters three days to contained the raging fire which spread over a distance because of the exposure of fuel, particularly kerosene, that gulped out of the vandalised pipeline.