NNPC Renews Pipelines Protection Contracts for Communities

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has renewed its contract with communities to protect its long stretch of pipelines across the country.

It said yesterday in a statement that the renewal became necessary as it seeks to effectively combat the growing scourge of pipeline sabotage that has impacted negatively on its operations.

In a statement by its Group General Manager Public Affairs Division, Ohi Alegbe in Abuja, the corporation disclosed its renewal and extension of the pipeline protection contract to some of its host communities.

It explained the rationale behind the renewal of the contract which was first awarded in 2011, saying that there has been a noticeable increase in the spate of attacks on crude oil, products, and gas pipelines since the expiration of the first community-based contract in 2012 and thus leading to frequent production shut-ins and deferrals of gas supply to power plants.

“The pipeline protection contract is part of our community engagement programme across our host communities aimed at getting community members to help in the task of protecting the pipelines around their communities,” Alegbe said in the statement.

He noted that while the earlier pipeline protection contract with the communities which lasted from 2011 to 2012 subsisted, breaches to the corporation’s pipelines were minimal which conduced to the rise in production.

He therefore said: “The recent rise in the frequency and intensity of willful attacks on our pipelines dictates that we step up our community engagement programme to help stem the tide of the pipeline vandalism scourge.

“In the current programme, we have not only renewed the contracts for the three initial community-based companies involved in the 2011 contract, we have extended the programme to five other community-based companies in other states where we have a high concentration of pipelines stretching from the Niger Delta to the Ondo, Ogun, Oyo and Lagos States.

“The contracts do not in any way obviate or undermine the responsibility of the police and other security agencies to protect the pipelines.

They are actually designed to complement the work of the security agencies by raising the alarm and drawing the attention of security agencies to any suspicious movements around the pipelines right of way,” Alegbe added.

It also called on the media and other members of the public to desist from reading political meanings to its operations.