Nigeria fights pipeline fire, fuel shortage looms

LAGOS, Nigeria (Reuters) -- Nigerian drafted in extra fire fighters on Friday to try to extinguish a gasoline pipeline blaze that killed more than 60 people near Lagos on Thursday.

State-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corp (NNPC), which owns the pipeline and the country's biggest products depot nearby, said it was trying to avert a fuel crisis.

Fire crews battled late into the night and managed to isolate the fire at its source -- the fishing village of Ebute-Oko, which lies across a lagoon from Lagos.

The village was almost deserted on Friday. Local people said the pipeline had been leaking for nearly two months.

"At least 60 people died in this needless fire," senior local official Karimu Alabi said at the scene.

Many of the dead were fishermen incinerated in their dugout canoes as flames spread rapidly along the line of the oil leak. Witnesses said the blaze was ignited by a wood stove where a woman was cooking in the open as oil spread along the beach.

Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil exporter, has been plagued by oil fires that have killed hundreds of people over the past two years. The last blaze was in July, when at least 250 villagers scavenging fuel from a pipeline died when the fuel exploded.

NNPC blames the disasters on oil thieves who puncture pipelines criss-crossing the country to tap gasoline for sale on the thriving black market.

Fuel shortage

NNPC stopped pumping oil products from the nearby Atlas Cove jetty, a key port for Nigeria's gasoline imports.

"There are enough stocks at depots to last two weeks," NNPC spokesman Ndu Ughamadu told Reuters. "But notwithstanding we want to ensure that pumping resumes very soon from Atlas Cove."

Ughamadu said NNPC had brought in construction firm Julius Berger to help extinguish the fire.

"Our men have been given marching orders to repair (the pipeline) once the fire is put out," he added.

Nigeria, a country of over 110 million people, is already gripped by a gasoline shortage which can only get worse because of this blaze just before the peak demand season at Christmas.

Fuel scarcity has been a regular feature of Nigerian life for years due to neglect of the country's four refineries during years of corrupt military rule. NNPC is forced to import large quantities of oil products.

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