Nigeria: at least 80 dead in the explosion of a clandestine oil refinery

At least 80 people were killed in the explosion at a clandestine oil refinery in southern Nigeriaan area devastated by decades of vandalism and illegal exploitation of hydrocarbons.

The blast occurred Friday night at the illegal site between the southern oil states of Rivers and Imo, police said.

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“We recovered at least 80 severely burned bodies”Ifeanyi Nnaji, from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), told AFP, adding that the number of victims could increase.

“We learned that there are many corpses in the mountains and in the nearby woods”he added.

The person in charge of the NEMA assured that the explosion caused injuries with serious burns to several more people.

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“We believe that many of those people later died in hospital,” he added.

Nnaji explained that the scene of the explosion is littered with charred vehicles and drums, used to transport the stolen oil.

Police confirmed that the explosion took place at an illegal refinery, but did not give data on the number of victims.

Some media outlets reported more than 100 deaths in the explosion, the latest in a long series in this country, Africa’s leading oil producer, where this type of accident is frequent.

vandalize and steal

In the oil region of the Niger Delta, criminals from some local communities routinely vandalize pipelines to transfer and steal hydrocarbons, which are then refined in illegal sites, to finally be sold on the black market.

Most of the inhabitants live in extreme poverty despite the millions of dollars generated in the region, with a production of about two million barrels per day.

Nigeria, the largest African oil producer, gets 90% of the country’s income from these exports.

According to formal sector sources, Every day the country loses some 200,000 barrels of crude oil due to vandalism and theft and illegal transfer of oil.

But the inhabitants of the region accuse the big oil companies of having contributed to the contamination of the area, without participating in its development in return.

Decades of oil slicks have devastated mangroves and entire villages, where fishing and agriculture once guaranteed survival as a source of local income.

The worst explosion of an oil pipeline in Nigeria occurred in October 1998 in the town of Jesse, in the south of the country, causing more than 1,000 deaths among its inhabitants.

The government has deployed the army to carry out heavy-handed operations to destroy illegal refineries in the Niger Delta, and try to stop the looting of oil resources.

But the balance of this repression has produced few results, and hundreds of illegal refineries continue to operate between the marshes and the forests of the region.

An investigation has been opened to determine what caused the explosion on Friday, the head of the National Oil Transfer Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), Idris Musa, told AFP.

“The investigations are ongoing and the fire that started after the explosion has been partially controlled,” he said.

Source: Elcomercio

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