HARD facts have again been presented on the activities and impact of crude oil thieves on the exploration and production operations of oil firms as well as the physical environment. Shell Petroleum Development Company, operator of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation/SPDC Joint Venture, has disclosed that the current oil theft in the Niger Delta Basin is unprecedented and that swathes of land around vandalised oil pipelines are severely devastated. Earlier in July, Shell had linked the rampant cases of crude oil theft in the Niger Delta to international syndicates.The companys Vice-President, Health, Safety and Environment and Corporate Affairs, sub-Saharan Africa, Mr. Tony Attah, told journalists on November 2 that 16 new oil theft sites had been discovered in the Imo River Field alone, while 10 additional illegal oil bunkering incidents were recorded between August 28 and November 2, 2011. Aerial photographs available to the company revealed drilled holes and illegally installed valves for the transfer of crude oil to waiting barges and trucks. We are very disappointed that oil thieves are still at work, he stated, lamenting the severe environmental impact and loss of badly needed revenue to finance development. Wikileaks, the online whistle blower, once revealed that no other major oil-producing country ... loses as much revenue from illicit oil bunkering as Nigeria, largely because the political elite, militants, and communities profit from such operations.On October 31, 2011 the spokesman of the military Joint Task Force in the Niger Delta, Lt. Col. Timothy Antigha, had reported the seizure of a ship laden with 5,000 tonnes of stolen crude oil and 30 barges with unspecified quantities of crude and illegally refined petroleum products in Bayelsa State. The incident, which reinforces the alarm by SPDC, is the latest in a series of seizures by the JTF in the past 24 months. The most sensational had been those of MT LAILA and MV SHEKINA, two vessels impounded by the JTF in October 2009 and February 2010, respectively. MV SHEKINA was laden with 723,628 tonnes of crude oil at the time it was impounded. Curiously, little is known of the outcome of the arrests and the whereabouts of the crude oil cargoes.That illegal oil bunkering has continued to thrive at the expense of the nation and its economy is the direct consequence of the operational and moral weaknesses of security personnel and the indifference of the Federal Government. Security experts say oil theft almost always involves someone on the inside. So often, vessels impounded and handed over to the authorities for appropriate legal action have disappeared from Nigerias territorial waters with their cargoes intact and without any disciplinary action ever taken against negligent security operatives.The Federal Government inexplicably chose to overlook the findings and recommendations of the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative Audit Report, released in April, 2006. The report had queried why the refineries in 1999 and 2000 received more crude oil than was sent from the oil terminals and also demanded that the NNPC account for 22 million barrels of crude oil sent to it but did not get to the refineries during the years 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004.NEITIs findings suggest criminal diversion or illegal lifting made from oil facilities and sent to the refineries for processingfor private gain. NNPC ought to have been investigated, as recommended in the report, to expose and punish officials behind the scandal. Again, the 22 million barrels that got lost in transitand had been unreported until the NEITI audit - confirms institutional complicity in the diversion of crude oil.On June 12, 2006, statistics from the Department of Petroleum Resources were published in national dailies, showing that Nigeria lost as much as 800,000 barrels of crude oil daily to oil thieves. The trend has persisted, culminating in SPDCs claims that the scale of theft is unprecedented. Shell insists that until organised large-scale oil theft and illegal refining are stopped, there can be no lasting solution to the pollution of some areas of the Niger Delta.The Federal Government is entirely to blame for the economic brigandage being orchestrated by highly-placed and well-connected individuals and foreign collaborators against the nation. The oil thieves cannot be unknown to the Federal Government, because the tools and routes of their tradeoil barges, waterways and ocean-going oil tankers anchored at the high seas awaiting trans-loadingare clearly within Nigerias areas of surveillance.Appropriate measures to check oil theft have long been canvassed by stakeholders from within the petroleum industry and experts from abroad. Years ago, the Norwegian authorities offered to assist Nigeria with technology for monitoring oil production and transmission across the entire Niger Delta. The Federal Government showed little interest. Nigerias industry operators have suggested that fingerprinting of crude oil lifted from Nigeria would render stolen crude unmarketable abroad.It is obvious that Nigerias security agencies are not doing enough to combat oilfield crimes. Who are the owners of the tankers used in the illegal business' Is the huge income stream created by the illegal act not being used to buy weapons, bribe officials and bankroll sectarian and other bloody violence across the country' It has become imperative for the State Security Service to create an oil theft unit with a view to taking a very proactive approach to identifying, locating and prosecuting offenders engaged in committing oilfield crimes. The international syndicates and their local cohorts should be exposed and brought to justice.The Federal Government must actand decisively tooto protect the national economy and prevent powerful individuals from criminally amassing wealth that could turn them into a threat as is the case with the drug cartels of Columbia, Brazil and Mexico.
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