LAGOS, Nigeria
An explosion at a gas processing plant on Sunday killed at
least 15 people and destroyed about 50 buildings after a fire broke out in a
suburb of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, emergency services said.
The Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said the explosion was triggered after a
truck hit some gas cylinders stacked in a gas processing plant near the
corporation’s pipeline in Abule Ado area of Lagos state.
The impact
of the explosion led to the collapse of nearby houses, damaged NNPC’s pipeline
and caused the corporation to halt pumping operations on the Atlas Cove-Mosimi
pipeline, the state-owned oil company said in a statement.
Several
people were injured and taken to hospital, according to Ibrahim Farinloye,
zonal coordinator for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).
Plumes of
smoke billowed into the air as people watched, while firefighters tried to
quench the flames, a Reuters witness said.
Farinloye
told Reuters that “the explosion destroyed over 50 residential houses.”
Pipeline fires in
Nigeria, Africa’s biggest crude oil producer, are common and they are mostly
caused by theft and sabotage. The methods used to steal oil often result in
accidents that cause fires.
“The fire
started with smoke,” one eyewitness said. “The smoke was coming up and later we
heard a sound ... and some houses collapsed even the roofs.”
NNPC said
that the temporary shutdown of the petroleum products pipeline would not affect
the normal supply of products to the Lagos and surrounding towns. -
Reuters
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