At Least Three Dead After FPSO Trinity Spirit Explosion In Nigeria

At least three people died in Nigeria as a result of an explosion of the floating, production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel Trinity Spirit.

The FPSO Trinity Spirit exploded, caught fire, and sank at the Ukpokiti Terminal in Nigeria last week. The FPSO is owned by Shebah Exploration and Production Company Limited (SEPCOL) which is owned by a combination of Nigerian and overseas corporate entities including Abbeycourt Trading Company, Abbeycourt Petroleum Company, and Allenne Limited.

The FPSO Trinity Spirit was built 46 years ago and can process up to 22,000 barrels of oil per day, inject up to 40,000 barrels of water per day and store 2 million barrels of oil. It served as the primary production facility for OML 108 and is also a government-approved terminal for lifting operations for all OML 108 production.

At the time of the incident, Ikemefuna Okafor, the CEO of SEPCOL, said that there were ten crewmen onboard the vessel before the incident and that there were no reported fatalities.

According to several media reports which cited the operating company, this is now not the case as at least three people died, and four crew members are still missing. The unfortunate three crewmen were found dead on Sunday after three people had been found alive last week.

It is worth noting that the Trinity Spirit was not producing oil at the time of the blast, after the consortium running the oilfield, including SEPCOL, lost its production license in 2019.

Immediately after the accident, environmentalists claimed that the vessel was not only old but also badly maintained.

Also, Nigeria's environment minister said on Saturday the vessel had been storing about 50,000-60,000 barrels of crude, well below its capacity of 2 million barrels.

Rigzone attempted to contact the company, but the editorial team received no response as of yet. The article will be edited if and when a response comes in.

Below is a video of the incident published on Instagram by user 'The Whistler NG'.

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by The Whistler NG (@thewhistlerng)

To contact the author, email bojan.lepic@rigzone.com