By Tife Owolabi
YENAGOA (Reuters) -Nigerian state oil company NNPC has said a fire on a crude storage barge at its Cawthorne Channel facility in the coastal Rivers state had been contained with no casualties.
NNPC spokesperson Olufemi Soneye said in a statement late on Thursday the blaze started at about 1310 GMT on Wednesday and spread to other barges before being contained.
The incident had not affected operations at the flow station, Soneye said.
In a separate incident, the recovery of excess oil at a Shell spill, reported on February 17, is due to begin on Friday, Nigeria’s oil spill agency said.
The cause of the spill, at Kolo Creek in nearby Bayelsa state, remains unknown, as the suspected leak point is submerged, the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) said, after a joint investigation visit to the site.
NOSDRA spokesperson Chukwuemeka Woke said Shell had constructed a watertight enclosure, known as a coffer dam, to allow access to the pipeline, and that the spill site had been contained.
(Reporting by Tife Owolabi in YenagoaWriting by Elisha Bala-GbogboEditing by David Goodman and Rachna Uppal)
