Oscarline Onwuemenyi 10 March 2015, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The management of the Nigerian Gas Company (NGC), a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), has lamented the negative impact of pipeline vandalism to the operations of the company and to the economic health of the nation.
The acting Executive Director, Operations of the company, Mr. Gabriel Aggrey, while reacting to recent attacks on its pipeline in the Niger Delta region, said the company is poised to stop further attacks on its facilities.
He lamented that tampering with gas pipelines reduces the gas volume that they are able to extend to customers.
According to him, “Whenever it happens, we lose about 1.5GW of electricity to the network of the national grid and a volume of about 200 million is differed.”
Apart from the huge resources used to fix pipelines when they are vandalised, Aggrey also said it degrades the nation’s power generation capacity.
“The core fuel to most of our power plants is our gas. So if we cannot take gas to the power plants, generation suffers.
“The bleep we have been seeing recently in power generation and availability of power in the country has to do with this vandalism,” he said.
Pointing out solutions to the challenge, the company said that it plans to bring on board, host communities to be a part of those to secure the assets.
According to an official with the company, the gas pipeline was vandalised on March 2, 2015 by unknown persons, noting that the impact of the destruction stretched as long as 56km from the point of the blast.
While gas pipeline vandalism may not be as rampant as crude oil theft, it has been reported that the country loses about $600m daily to the nefarious activities of pipeline vandalism.
