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Nigeria urged to replace old pipelines

2004-10-25 16:40:52

LAGOS, Oct. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Multinational oil companies operating in Nigeria have been directed to assess the integrity of their pipelines and replace aged ones, according to a communique available here Monday.

Issued by Nigeria's National Council on Environment (NCE) in Ota in the southwestern state of Ogun, the communique said "all the pipelines that are over 20 years must be replaced and all surface pipelines buried before 2007."

The NCE also recommended that 10 percent of the ecological funds paid to each state be used for the implementation of waste management programs in addition to the state's budgetary provisions.

The council directed the state and local governments to refer all developers of new major projects to the Federal Ministry of Environment to ensure compliance with the country's Environmental Impact Assessment Act.

It also directed the state governments to integrate environmental concerns into the State Economic Empowerment and Development Strategies and the Local Economic Empowerment and Development Strategies.

Recently, Nigeria has instituted a team of safety auditors to carry out routine checks on oil installations in the west African country to check incessant environment pollution.

According to Mac Ofurhie, managing director of Nigeria's Directorate of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the team aims to tour facilities of oil companies to access their compliance to government maximum ecological and environmental safety standards.

Oil pollution is rampant in Nigeria's Niger Delta, Africa's oilindustry heartland, where over 70 percent of the local communitieshave been displaced from their ancestral land due to land degradation or lost their means of livelihood as farmers or fishermen due to water pollution.

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