From Edith Ike-Eboh, NAN/
Over 20 billion litres of petroleum products have been transported through the pipeline since 2016
Mr Luke Anele, the Managing Director of Nigerian Pipelines Storage Company (NPSC), has said.
Anele, who made the fact known in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in Abuja, on Wednesday, said the country had enough stockpile of products being distributed through the pipelines.
“By estimate, we have transported millions of products, in fact over twenty billion litres of products have been moved through the pipelines since inception.
“Our major stockpile now is the Mosimi Depot and at any point in time, we have a little above 100 million litres.
“And we have the other depots — we have in Satellite, we have in Ibadan; if you add up Ibadan, add up Satellite, and our depot at Atlas Cove, add Aba depot, we will have about 200 million litres at this point, excluding the ones at our day tanks in Warri Refinery and Port Harcourt Refinery, ” he said.
Commenting on effect of vandalism to transportation of products, Anele said that bulk of the vandalised point was from Aba and Enugu.
He said that in the process of reactivating the pipelines some of them were ruptured and were difficult to weld.
“We will continue to prepare them anytime because we cannot afford to shut down for a very long time, so, we will continue to make repairs any time we find a window that is down,” he said.
He noted that the country lost reasonable volume of products resulting from vandalism and ageing of the lines.
Anele noted that in 2018, the company engaged National Engineering Technology Company (NETCO) to carry out a study and check the state of the facilities.
He said the step was for it to serve as an in-house estimate for proposals to get in third parties to put the pipelines under Public Private Partnership to change them.
According to him, most of the ruptured pipes are old and located in areas that are prone to attack.
” So what NETCO did was to develop an in-house estimate which will serve as our in-house estimate to benchmark whatever a third party brings forth when we open up the issues of pipelines and other critical infrastructure.
” They have finished the work and have given us preliminary report and then what we will take up from them is the final report, full and final presentation for us to study,” he added
He said that with viable pipelines, the country would realise huge revenue through transportation of products.
“If we have new pipelines, well protected, we will have what is called open access, so many companies will like to move their products through our pipelines.
“And with our depots revamped, you might decide to have your product berth at Port Harcourt and we pump into the line to Makurdi or any place of destination and you pay us for the service.
“If you want your product in, Minna, Suleja etc, we can pump through Warri with those facilities, ” he said.
He noted that a major challenge was the issue of trust and reliability.
“By the time this is done, we have now regenerated confidence in investors and users, also, the issue of clustering around Lagos will reduce,” Anele said
He added that breaking even in pipeline operations involved having constant product movement, “not epileptic movement of running today and day after tomorrow you shut down because of stealing’’.
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