The collateral damage being done by illegal oil bunkers/vandals is having a toll on the nation’s economy. GODWIN EGBA writes that painfully, gov’t and top security agents are involved.
Available record shows that hitherto 1979, not much of bunkerings were recorded as legitimate business activities with licences issued by the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) was the order of the day. However by 1979 proper, legitimacy was given to the business by DPR with issuance of licenses to a number of operators.
Due to abuse of the system, legal operations were put on hold in 2000 by government on account of the oil subsidy on petroleum products which gave the operators monumental profits that did not trickle down to government. In 2013, the presidency approved the resuscitation of bunkering activities in the country.
Bunkering is not new in Nigeria and the international shipping community map identifies the country as one of the strategic locations for purchasing bunker.
When oil bunkering started
Unfortunately, by the early eighties when the ignoble act of vandalism of oil pipelines started rearing its head and unmitigated oil theft activities, the government rose against it as economic sabotage.
The government now used the generic term, ‘illegal bunkering’ to promulgate a decree to stop the vandalisation of oil facilities due to the criminal activities of the saboteurs (vandals). Nigeria, a major producer and exporter of hydrocarbon fuels, has suffered some huge financial loses. The Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) in its report in 2014 said about N780 billion was being lost daily from the activities of illegal oil bunkering.
Its consequences
As a result, these illegal activities also led to costly pipe damage that were often severe, causing pollution, and forcing oil and gas operating companies like Shell, Total and Mobil, among others, to shut-down production.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and Shell Petroleum Development Company (NNPC/SPDC) are the major concerns that bear or suffer the unending damage and their attendant financial loss including personnel loss in the form of kidnapping.
NNPC and SPDC were always heard as they wail daily over the high rate of crude oil theft and vandalism which they alleged cost the nation over N 960 billion annually. In 2014, it was reported that the country lost at least 100,000 barrels of oil per day (b/d), about 5 percent of Nigeria’s total output in the first quarter of 2013 to theft from its onshore and swamp operations alone.
Sooner Nigeria witnessed the beginning of the New Year 2020, NNPC once again raised alarm that the country lost $ 750 million to oil theft in 2019. The group managing director (GMD) of NNPC, Malam Mele Kyari disclosed this in a statement signed by the acting spokesperson of the corporation, Mr Samson Makoji, when members of the Executive Intelligence Management Course 13 of the National Institute for Security Studies (NISS) visited the NNPC Tower in Abuja.
Kyari decried the no end criminal activities of oil thieves and pirates which he described it as a threat to the operations of the corporation, stressing that any threat to the corporation’s operations was also a direct threat to the very survival of the nation’s economy.
Chatham House report of 2014 stated that, “Some of petroleum products being stolen are exported; proceeds are laundered through world financial centres outside Nigeria and financial institutions overseas, thereby creating reputational political and legal hazards. It could also compromise parts of the legitimate oil business.”
Views from outside
Some stakeholders who spoke with the Blueprint in Port-Harcourt opined that the Chatham’s report pointed to the fact that officials outside Nigeria were aware that the problem existed and occasionally showed some interest at a high leve.
“Nigeria’s trade and diplomatic partners have taken no real action and no stakeholder group inside the country has a record of sustained and serious engagement with the issue.”
The mind-bogging report as at then was that it was not clear how much of Nigeria’s oil is stolen and exported daily. The only reference record suggest that an average of 100,000 b/d vanished from onshore, swamp and shallow-water areas in the first quarter of 2013. In comparison, this figure does not include what happens at the export terminals till date.
A Port Harcourt-based oil dealer, Chief Nathan Agom, in his reaction while speaking with Blueprint said, “Oil theft or bunkering in the Niger Delta oil bearing region is a way of life. The business whether one calls it illegal or what have you, is a tempo or wealth for a number of untouchable criminals who act as cartel in concert with some powerful Nigerians including unsuspected officials of the nation’s security agencies and other top past and present leaders in government.
“We know that what most of these special joint forces do is that once in a while they carryout face-saving operation and make arrest of insignificant stolen oil products in drums, tankers or jerricans by the locals which they burn publicly to tell the world that they are out to genuinely fight oil thieves. They are just after the local flies and not the untouchables who are on the export page with their stolen products,” Agom noted.
The experience of most Port-Harcourt based oil products marketers is that oil theft battle is still far from over as some powerful government officials are involved in destroying the economy. The organised perpetrators enrich powerful political office holders, top security officers especially officers posted to the Niger Delta region.
Oil bunkering/vandalism in R/state
Rivers State is known as one of the hottest money spinning bunkering area in the delta region. As one of the major oil and gas producing states, it has had its fair share of the activities of illegal oil bunkerering and pipeline vandalism over the years.
In July, 2019, media report carried that a dastard explosion of oil pipeline in Oyigbo local government area of the state killing about 40 people who went to the exploded facility to scoop products while some unfortunate innocent residents in the environ suffered some injuries.
The executive director, Operations, UTM Offshore Limited contracted to manage the facility, Mr. Kennedy Azumche disclosed that their incident report revealed that the pipeline was vandalised by some oil thiefs using sophisticated tools accessible to oil technical experts.
Blueprint also recalled that an oil pipeline in Komkon community in the same Oyigbo community area exploded in 2019 following a spillage which brought about residents in the community to go scooping products that later resulted in the explosion leaving about 43 people dead and scores injured.
Before now, from the Imo Rivers oil field to Bodo-Bonny gas pipelines, small, medium and large scale illegal oil bunkering as well as vandalism of oil and gas pipelines had really impacted negatively on the environment.
Sometimes, Shell would be forced to shut down some of its facilities due bunkering such as the Bodo-Bomu axis where illegal refining activities hold sway. Residents of the area are helplessly contending with the hazards the inferno had created since 2012.
Also in 2012, the multi-national shut down operations at the Imo Rivers trunkline in its operation after it found several crude theft points on the facility. Production of some 25,000 barrels of oil per day was differed.
Blueprint gathered that even some Shell staff are feeding fat from the share sabotage of oil theft and vandalism. For instance, in 19 November, 2012, men of the Joint Task-Force (JTF), code-named Operation Pulo Shield, arrested two young men identified as Shell workers for their involvement on a shell pipeline in Kporgbo community in Gokana local government of the state.
The two suspects, Mr Bori Friday and Young Apahia were said to be surveillance staff of the company who were to protect the pipelines but decided to help themselves through vandalism.
On a daily basis, government lose huge revenue and facilities while lives continue to perish at pipeline fire locations.
Some sceptics posited that as long as all the security strategies put in place by government and oil companies cannot subdue illegal bunkerers and vandals because of the financial benefits, the war against the economic sabotage is still far from over.
