It was not possible Thursday afternoon whether oil had begun to spill into the ocean. Environmental advocates in the country are worried about the impact of the incident.
Le Monde with AFP
The fire of an oil ship with a storage capacity of two million barrels, which declared itself, Wednesday 2 February, after an explosion, has feared a possible environmental disaster along the coast of Nigeria. Images broadcast by local media show a thick black smoke escaping from a capable ship, ravaged by the flames and flowing.
The Nigerian company owner of the ship stated that ten crew members were aboard this floating production, storage and unloading unit (Floating Production Storage and Offloading or FPSO) off the state of the state of Delta, in southern Nigeria, the first gross producer of Africa.
FPSOs are floating units including the production and storage of oil or natural gas extracted at sea by platforms. A fire “burshed our offshore installation, the ship FPSO Trinity Spirit, at the UKPOKITI terminal, after an explosion in the early hours Wednesday,” announced the CEO of the exploration and production company SEPCOL, Ikemefuna Okafor, in a statement. “For the moment, no deaths have been reported, but we can confirm that there were ten crew members on board before the incident,” continued the SEPCol CEO.
The company said everything do to “control the situation” and said that an investigation was under way to shed light on the cause of this explosion.
Similarly, the national agency responsible for supervising oil operations in Nigeria “launched investigations”, according to a statement received Thursday by the France-Press agency (AFP).
Evaluation of the Damage in progress
It was not possible Thursday afternoons whether oil had begun to pour into the ocean, but the storage capacity of the vessel makes a fear of a possible ecological disaster. According to Sepcol, the Trinity Spirit has a processing capacity of 22,000 barrels a day and a storage capacity of two million barrels. The number of barrels stored in the ship at the time of the explosion is still unknown and could, however, be well below its maximum capacity.
The Nigerian Navy told AFP “having deployed his ships on the spot to make the necessary help,” according to his spokesman Suleman Dahun. The Nigerian agency for the detection and response to oil leakage, contacted by the AFP, says to be also on the spot, but did not wish to comment more.
Environmental advocates in Nigeria are worried about the impact of the incident. “There will definitely be an oil leak,” said Mike Karikpo of the local NGO Environmental Rights Action-Friends of the Environment. “This is an installation that processes more than 20,000 barrels a day (…), oil will reach the surrounding communities,” he alerted.
Black tides are frequent in Nigeria, but they usually affect the Niger River and its tributaries, more rarely the maritime area. The Niger Delta has for years been the scene of serious disorders, armed groups percent of pipelines to loot crude, causing ecological disasters.