By Mary Tom
NNPC Ltd said in January, that a total of 96 companies from various jurisdictions had indicated interest in undertaking the rehabilitation of its downstream facilities, ranging from critical pipelines to depots and terminals, through the Build, Operate and Transfer financing model.
The Managing Director of the Nigerian Pipelines and Storage Company, Mrs Ada Oyetunde, said the exercise was in conformity with the mandate of the Federal Government to prioritise the rehabilitation of critical downstream infrastructure across the country.
She listed the facilities that would be rehabilitated by successful bidders to include critical pipelines for crude oil supply to the refineries and evacuation of refined products, depots, and terminals.
The Wilful or deliberate act of damaging petroleum pipelines with the sole aim of stealing crude oil and associated petroleum products is referred to as Pipeline vandalism.
One of the ways to stop pipeline vandalization is that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited continues to work in partnership with the local communities and other stakeholders to eliminate the menace of pipeline vandalism.
It is also expedient for the Federal Government to deploy modern technology in reducing both internal and external compromises within the oil industry, security agencies and communities hosting oil pipelines with a view to tracking the activities of vandals and reducing incidence of vandalism. Measures like collaboration, implementation of Global Memoranda of Understanding and deployment of technologies are other avenues to reduce the incidents around pipelines.
Annually billions of Naira is spent to maintain pipelines used to transport oil products, with hundreds of such pipelines vandalised a recent report state that it cost the NNPC Limited an average of N3.8 billion monthly to repair pipeline vandalized. As NNPC recorded no expenses in January 2021 but spent N5.81 billion on pipeline security and management in February from available information. In March N5.32 billion was spent followed by N2.64billion in April; N5.26billionn in May; N6.17 billion in June, and N7.35 billion in July.
NNPC also did not record any expenses in August, however in September N2.30 billion was allocated to maintain and secure pipelines across the country. In 2020, NNPC spent N53.36 billion on pipeline repairs and management costs.
Money spent on vandalized pipelines will go a long way to improve the welfare of the citizens as well provide employment and empowerment for the teaming youths especially in the communities where these pipelines are buried.
Although security architecture with single accountability for National Critical Infrastructure; industry and regulatory commitment to transparent crude oil and product accounting are some of the measures taken by the government to curb the menace; other measures that can be taken are realistic expectations by host communities and empowerment of sustainable social investment mechanisms among others.
Over the years, NNPC has engaged the Nigerian security forces to provide security including various oil facilities surveillance contracts to the community. It is advisable for NNPC to focus more on technology such as the Automated Oil and Gas Pipeline Protector which works by detecting the earth vibration signals unique to ground digging and pipeline breakage using custom designed sensing units.
Sensing Units are buried underneath the ground, above the buried pipeline and are spaced 200m apart. Acquired seismic signals are processed by the Arduino Mega controller board using a customized algorithm that quantifies the activities going on at the surface of the earth into threatening activities (e.g. digging and drilling), and non-threatening activities (e.g. walking and running).
After detecting a threatening activity, the Sensing Unit sends an alert message to the mobile phones of the patrol officers in patrol cars spaced 20km apart on the pipeline route and to dedicated control Centres. As testing of the Automated Oil and Gas Pipeline Protector has been conducted in Effurun, Delta State.
The system demonstrated the ability to detect a vandal digging within 20 seconds of the activity’s commencement. It also demonstrated the ability to alert the appropriate authorities via text messages containing the date, time, type of activity detected, alarm confidence rate, GPS location and driving directions to the vandalization site which includes the integration of a line of sight (LOS) drone to assist local authorities in navigating and mobilizing to the vandalization site with the appropriate number of armed personnel to handle the vandals.
Mary Tom is the Publisher of Fast Track News and can be reached via 08136039179
