…Commends Firm’s Pipeline Protection, Community Engagement
PORT HARCOURT — The Niger Delta Progressive Alliance (NDPA) has commended Pipeline Infrastructure Nigeria Limited (PINL) for preventing pipeline-related oil spills and protecting farmlands, aquatic ecosystems and host communities during the recent flooding across parts of the Niger Delta.
The group attributed the development to what it described as PINL’s sustained pipeline surveillance, maintenance and responsible engagement with communities hosting critical oil infrastructure.
In a statement signed by its Convener, Ambassador Nse Victor Udoh, the NDPA said annual flooding in the Niger Delta often poses serious environmental threats, particularly when floodwaters come in contact with damaged pipelines, spilled crude oil and illegal activities around oil and gas infrastructure.
However, it said the recent flood season presented a different experience, with no reported incidents of widespread oil contamination of floodwaters, dead fish or the spread of crude oil into farmlands and residential communities attributable to pipeline failures.
The group said the development underscored the importance of preventive pipeline management, stressing that the success of infrastructure protection should also be measured by disasters averted.
According to the NDPA, PINL’s regular patrols, monitoring and right-of-way surveillance helped to identify and address potential threats before they developed into major incidents.
The alliance also said the company’s inspection, maintenance and repair activities contributed to preserving the integrity of critical pipelines during periods of heavy rainfall and flooding.
“This season, the waters rose again, higher than caution would have preferred. Yet something in the old pattern broke,” the group said.
“We have followed this flood from its rise to its recession, and we have found an absence worth naming: no dead fish crowding the shallows, no oil trailing the water into our homes and farmlands, no poisoned harvest waiting to be discovered.
“What did not happen this year is, in its own quiet way, as significant as anything that did.”
The NDPA said the development reflected the effectiveness of PINL’s technical operations and its relationship with host communities.
“For this, we look to Pipeline Infrastructure Nigeria Limited and commend it on two distinct grounds: the efficiency of its core service and the integrity of its social responsibility to the communities it operates among,” the group said.
“This season made the two difficult to separate, for competence in the technical met conscience in the communal, and the result speaks for itself.”
Beyond pipeline surveillance, the NDPA also commended PINL for interventions in flood-affected communities in Rivers, Bayelsa and Imo states.
It cited the company’s restoration activities in areas previously affected by illegal refining, as well as empowerment programmes targeting women and youths in host communities.
The group said the interventions demonstrated that corporate social responsibility should go beyond occasional charitable gestures and form part of a sustained commitment to the welfare and development of host communities.
Udoh said the NDPA’s commendation followed its assessment of the company’s operational performance and community interventions.
“The Niger Delta Progressive Alliance does not distribute its praise as ornament,” he said.
“We have watched this region too long, and grieved its wounds too often, to commend an industry that has not earned it. But where diligence is genuine, and where we have seen it for ourselves, it must be spoken aloud.”
He said the group was commending PINL on two fronts — the efficiency of its operations and the seriousness of its social responsibility.
“We commend Pipeline Infrastructure Nigeria Limited on two counts that this season has made inseparable: the efficiency of its service, tested by a flood and found equal to it, and the seriousness of its social responsibility, executed not as an afterthought but as a discipline in its own right,” Udoh said.
“This season, our farms still stand where the water reached them. Our creeks still hold their life.”
The NDPA urged PINL to sustain the standard, stressing that the performance recorded during the flood season should not be treated as a one-off achievement.
It said pipeline security and community welfare remained closely connected in the Niger Delta, where critical oil infrastructure traverses several communities and environmentally sensitive areas.
The group noted that effective protection of oil and gas infrastructure required not only technical competence but also the cooperation and goodwill of host communities.
The alliance urged the company to continue strengthening the relationship, saying the protection of critical national infrastructure, environmental preservation and improvement of host-community welfare should remain mutually reinforcing objectives.
The NDPA described PINL’s performance during the flood season as an example of how operational efficiency and responsible community engagement could combine to protect critical energy infrastructure, the environment and communities.
