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By Paul Williams
Even as the soot menace in Rivers State continues to take its toll on the health of residents, in spite government intervention, fertilizer producer, Indorama Petrochemicals and Fertilizer Company, Eleme, says it is not emitting “any dangerous gas into the atmosphere. “
Conducting journalists on a tour of facilities at the company recently, head of Corporate Communications, Dr. Jossy Nkwocha, said though officially “nobody has mentioned Indorama as having contributed to soot, but because of insinuations here and there, we invited journalists to come and see for themselves.
“We have made presentations to show that we have taken adequate measures to see that we don’t emit any soot whatsoever, and from your (journalists) observations, you can see for yourselves that there is no soot whatsoever.
“Indorama is an open book; that is why we have taken you to all areas of our operations – in petrochemical, fertilizer, control rooms, to see for yourselves that we don’t allow any extraneous gases to escape into the air. Everything is monitored through the latest equipment to ensure that no dangerous gas escapes into the atmosphere in whatever form,” he said.
Dr. Nkwocha explained that Indorama has “a closed system and this closed system does not allow any strenuous gas to escape. And as they have explained to us in the control room, we buy this natural from either Agip or TotalEnergies and we don’t allow it to waste by flaring.
“What it means is that we don’t contribute in any way to soot. Rather, we are helping government to produce fertilizer for farmers, we are helping Nigeria to produce petrochemicals for industries.
“We have 7,000 full time workers and contractors. They come here every day; so, there is employment of more than 7,000 persons. If you extrapolate it by their family members and others, you could see the number of persons.
“We supply fertiliser to about 32 million farmers. We have also told you we supply Urea to blending plants and each of them may employ about 100 persons. So, Indorama is helping so much in creating jobs.
“We have two major products: petrochemical and fertiliser. The petrochemicals are the engine room of Nigeria’s industrialisation. Without those things, we will be spending so much money to import petrochemical and because we are producing in Nigeria, the country is saving so much money. So, we are doing what they call import substitution.”
Chairman of Energy and Maritime Reporters, EMR, Martin Giadom, who was part of the tour, quoted the company’s Polyethene Plant manager, Engr Charles Osuji, as confirming that Indorama subjects its facilities “to annual and regular certification Audit by local and international bodies for control to confirm and ensure we are not polluting the environment.”
Giadom later told our reporter that, “I can say from my findings that Indorama may not be emitting soot in her operations. I didn’t see gas flares and smoke in the atmosphere as I was told gas waste is being converted into the production of other bye products.
“We could only see and hear the boilers steaming at the Petrochemical department with no smoking as shown in the first video with my voice. We were taken to all the major plants as we could only see the plants steaming and no smoking. We were shown the turbines, briefed on their cleaner power sources from the turbines and equally informed on the Company power transition on building more greener sources beyond its internal consumption.”
Giadom applauded the management of Indorama Eleme Petrochemical Company for the opportunity to have members of the Energy and Maritime Reporters EMR on a tour of facilities “even when it was not asked for.”