Lagos, Nigeria (PANA) – The ‘killer kerosene’ that has left at least 20 people dead and many more badly burnt in Nigeria’s southern Delta state was actually condensate siphoned by unscrupulous persons from a Shell pipeline, the private Punch newspaper reported Thursday.
The newspaper said it got the information from a preliminary report of the team raised by the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) to probe the series of explosions in Warri and Effurun in recent times.
The report said the condensates were siphoned from the pipelines leading to the Utogu Gas Plant of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) to various markets in the state as kerosene.
“Activities of pipeline vandals and bunkering, which has been on the rise around SPDC pipelines, are suspect, particularly in the Utorogu Gas Plant area,” the report said.
Six persons have been arrested in connection with the explosions, the latest in a series that has left dozens dead and hundreds disfigured for life in recent years.
Acute scarcity of kerosene in oil producing Nigeria has forced unscrupulous people to sell various mixtures, including kerosene mixed with the highly combustible petrol, as kerosene.
Kerosene is widely used for cooking in Nigeria.
The state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has blamed the scarcity on its inability to discharge imported cargoes of kerosene to the only receptacle, Atlas Cove Jetty in Lagos, due to vandalisation of the pipelines from the jetty.
In the meantime, the opposition Action Congress (AC) has called on the government to move swiftly to unravel the source of the ‘killer kerosene’ and punish those behind it.
“Kerosene explosions are the worst form of accidents, because they either kill or disfigure victims for life,” the party said, blaming the incessant explosions to either inaction by the government or a ‘big cover-up’.
Lagos – 26/07/2007
http://www.afriquenligne.fr/news/daily_news/nigeria_moves_to_unravel_source_of_’killer_kerosene’_200707263958/
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