By Olaitan Ibrahim
An explosion has rocked a section of the Trans Niger Pipeline in Bodo Community in Gonna Local Government Area of Rivers State.
The explosion occurred late on Monday night near the Bodo-Bonny Road under construction.
Thick black smoke was seen billowing into the atmosphere, with a raging fire spreading fast into the mangrove from a video that emerged on Tuesday morning.
The TNP is a federal transport line that supplies oil to the Bonny Export Terminal in Rivers State.
A media person in the Renaissance Renaissance Africa Energy Holdings said the company is currently responding to the incident.
Renaissance Africa Energy Holdings just completed the landmark transaction between itself and Shell to acquire the entire equity holding in the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria.
Our correspondent learnt that the incident occurred late Monday night, igniting a fire that has been raging through the mangrove areas.
It was gathered that the incident occurred near Bodo-Bonny Road, which is currently under construction by Julius Berger Nigeria Plc through a joint funding partnership between Nigeria LNG Limited and the Federal Government of Nigeria.
The TNP transports 150,000 barrels of crude oil per day to Bonny Export Terminal, using a pipeline network.
The Renaissance media team member, who did not want to be mentioned because he had yet to get approval to speak with the press, said the incident is being investigated.
According to him, the cause of the explosion is not yet known as of Tuesday morning.
“We don’t know if it is an explosion or not, but we are responding to the report of an incident in the operation. Our response is a regulator-led joint investigation team. We are not going to speculate,” the media person said.
Renaissance Africa Energy Holdings is a consortium consisting of four successful Nigerian independent oil and gas companies: ND Western Limited, Aradel Holdings Plc, FIRST Exploration and Petroleum Development Company Limited, and the Waltersmith Group, each with considerable operations experience in the Niger Delta, and Petrolin, an international energy company with global trading experience and a pan African outlook.