Around 150-200 people were killed on Friday when a gasoline pipeline exploded in Nigeria, according to officials, incinerating people as they were trying to drain fuel into cans.

"You can see the corpses. Some are burned to ash. Others are remnants ... We estimate 150 to 200 people died," the police commissioner told Reuters news agency.

"It seems these people were literally incinerated, almost instantly," CNN reported from Lagos.

Rescue workers dug a ditch near the exploded pipeline, the commissioner told The Associated Press, saying the bodies would be "given a mass burial."

A Reuters reporter said sand had been cleared from around the buried pipeline and that it bore marks of drilling. The pipeline carries petroleum from a jetty offshore to a distribution point inland, he reported.

"People insist on breaking into these installations in order to steal petrol in the pipes and it's difficult to man every pipeline in the country," Nigerian government spokesman Femi Fani-Kayode said.

"We don't have the people or resources, and I don't think anyone in the world does."

The fire from the blast has been extinguished, and Nigerian police officers have secured the scene. Nigerian officials say the pipe exploded on Snake Island.

"A number of villages were involved and came to assist and help our security agents," Fani-Kayode said.

Despite its oil riches, Nigeria's population remains impoverished and people often tap into pipelines crossing their lands, seeking fuel for cooking or resale on the black market.

The fuel thefts can easily lead to tragedy because safety is not a concern.

"This is a very common occurrence here in Nigeria ... vandals going in trying to steal petroleum products and a motorcycle backs up and a spot just hits the pipeline and explodes," CNN's report stated.

"This is caused by hunger and greed. If you've got no job and you're hungry you take advantage of anything to feed your family. Anyone who takes this kind of risk is desperate," Olanrewaju Saka-Shenayon, a Lagos state government official, told Reuters.

Officials also suspect that some of the stolen oil is used to finance militant groups, such as the Movement for Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).

MEND has been responsible for some attacks on oil pipelines and a wave of kidnappings of oil workers, acts that cut oil output in the world's eighth-largest producer by about 25 percent annually, officials said.