By ADETOLA BADAMOSI, Abuja

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC) has disclosed that a total of 997 pipelines were vandalised between July 2019 and July 2020.

It stated that in July 2020 alone, a total of 36 pipelines were vandalised.

This is contained in the NNPC’s Monthly Financial and Operations Report for July 2020.

According to the report, the total amount of vandalised July this year represented 9 per cent increase from the 33 points recorded in June 2020.

In a breakdown, ATC-Mosimi and Aba-Enugu accounted for 28% each while PHC-Aba and the other locations recorded 14% and the remaining 31% respectively.

“NNPC in collaboration with the local communities and other stakeholders continuously strive to reduce and eventually eliminate this menace,” it states.

According to the corporation, the incident of crude oil theft and pipeline vandalism have continued to destroy value, thus putting it at disadvantaged competitive position.

Meanwhile, the NNPC’s Group Managing Director (GMD), Mele Kyari had recently, said that the country’s pipeline networks were completely compromised, thus blaming this on activities of vandals and lack of investment.

“Our pipeline network is completely compromised.

For two things the first is age. We have not invested in these assets for a very long period of time and they have deteriorated over the period of time as a result of age and natural integrity loss,”he said.

He stated that incidence of vandalism was a contributing factor as activities of vandals have further affected the functionality of the pipelines.

His words:”There are several actions of vandals across our pipeline networks, forcing us to practically stop the maintenance because they could no longer deliver the product that we want because their integrity was compromised.

They could no longer take the pressure required to deliver the huge volumes of crude oil on these pipelines.” (Nigerian Tribune)