MOSCOW (MRC) -- At least 25 people, including some minors, were killed in an explosion and fire at an illegal oil refinery in Nigeria's Rivers state on Friday, a local leader and a resident told Reuters on Sunday.
"The casualties involved are very high ... we are counting 25 bodies," Ifeanyi Omano, a community leader, told Reuters, adding: "We aren't certain of their identities yet," he said, adding that the dead included some minors.
Omano and local resident Chikwem Godwin said the explosion took place in the early hours of Friday, adding people from several communities were killed. A local police spokesman previously confirmed the incident but did not disclose the numbers of casualties.
Illegal refining is common in the oil-rich Delta region of Nigeria as impoverished locals tap pipelines to make fuel to sell for a profit. The practice, which can be as basic as boiling crude oil in drums to extract fuel, is highly dangerous.
Nigeria is Africa's largest oil exporter.
As MRC informed earlier, in August 2021, gunmen killed a police officer and six employees of a Nigerian oil and gas services contractor during an attack on buses transporting workers to a Shell project site in the southeastern state of Imo, Nigeria. Attacks on oil and gas facilities have long been a problem in Nigeria, where the multi-billion dollar industry sits alongside impoverished communities that have seen little benefit from it. In this case, the motive was unclear.
We remind that Royal Dutch Shell plans to reduce its refining and chemicals portfolio by more than half, it said in July 2020 without giving a precise timeframe. The move is part of the Anglo-Dutch company's plan to shrink its oil and gas business and expand its renewables and power division to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sharply by 2050.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,638,370 tonnes in the first eight months of 2021, up by 10% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 989,570 tonnes in the first eight months of 2021, up by 30% year on year. Deliveries of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas shipments of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
MRC