By Clara Nwachukwu & YeMIE ADEOYE
LAGOS — The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, and its subsidiary, Pipelines and Product Marketing Company, PPMC, said they have successfully drained over 450,000 litres of premium motor spirit, PMS, or petrol from an oil leak site at Isheri-Olofin along the Iyana Iba-Igando road in Lagos.

The corporation said the feat was achieved through a combined team of its pipeline engineers and safety/environment experts, adding that the quantity of petrol evacuated is the equivalent of over 13 standard trucks of petrol.

However, the corporation is still unable to determine the cause of the oil leak, which had contaminated wells and aquatic life in the area after weeks of search.

The new Managing Director, PPMC, Prince Haruna Momoh, who led a management team to an on-the-spot-assessment of the area:  “We don’t want to speculate, we want to allow the technical team to conduct a proper inquest but I know for sure that our pipelines are intact, I can vouch for the integrity of the pipelines.”

He said while the evacuation exercise lasted, the technical team would conduct a painstaking technical audit and inspection of the whole area to determine the root cause of the petrol leak.

A statement by the Group General Manager, Public Affairs Division of the NNPC, Dr. Levi Ajuonuma, yesterday, recalled that the NNPC/PPMC team had moved into the area early last month to avert a possible environmental tragedy, following report by residents of nearby Diamond Estate that water from their wells and boreholes had been polluted with huge volumes of petrol.

Momoh, reiterating the corporation’s resolve to avert any tragic incident arising from the unfortunate development, further said: “Our priority is safety. That is why the Group Managing Director of the NNPC dispatched this top management team to undertake a first hand appraisal of work progress. I am happy we have a competent technical team that is capable and well-equipped to arrest the situation as quickly as possible.”

Though the residents said the issue has been lingering for some weeks without quick response from the government, the PPMC boss disclosed that the NNPC had earlier dispatched a technical team to assess the problem, when it first received complaints from the people.

He assured the residents that the NNPC had assembled very competent team to handle the situation, adding that the team is also handling any emergency.

The Facility Manager of the Estate, who is also a resident, Mr. Alaba Akinsulire said the spill was first noticed around April 2010.

“When we moved into the Estate, there was no mixture of water and fuel. We started noticing that last year and as time goes on, it keeps on escalating; the fuel keeps on moving from row to row. It is now on the fourth row and there are 26 rows in the estate. The fuel is moving up, occupying more properties and the NNPC is saying that they don’t know what is causing it. But they are still working on it,” he said.