Earlier on Friday, a government official of Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta said oil thieves caused a fire this week on a Nigerian pipeline owned by Eni’s unit Agip, which feeds crude oil to a flowstation there. 

“The people were trying to open a crude loading point and it caught fire, the facility is owned by Agip,” said Iyenimi Sling, the Bayelsa state government official.

“The incident occurred on Wednesday and lasted to the wee hours of Thursday.”

The source at Italy’s oil and gas major Eni said the fire, which was probably caused by an attempt to illegally withdraw oil from the pipeline, was of a “limited dimension.”

“Impact on the production (of the terminal) is not significant,” the Eni source said, adding that work to put out the fire and repair the pipeline was expected to be completed in the next few hours.

The fire broke out on the 18th line of the Tebidaba-Brass pipeline near a place called Igbomatoru, the source said.