More ways crude oil thieves perpetrate their act have been uncovered as thousands of pipes used to siphon off the product from the OML 40, Trans-Forcados and PPMC trunklines have been recovered and retrieved in Warri, Delta State
The contractor handling the surveillance job revealed that the illegal connections into the trunk lines were detected working in conjunction with the Nigerian Navy and locals.
The pipes used in stealing the nation’s crude oil were loaded onto barges which takes them to points whereby connecting them to export trunk-lines at various point which has been happening unnoticed for years.
Working with the Nigerian Navy and the communities the contractor uncovered the illegal links.
Benson Onuwaje who works with the contractor in charge of Pipelines protection explains the What and How of the Industrial Scale stealing of the nations’ crude.
For the contractor, the guarding of the important national assets involves all stakeholders especially local communities where these pipelines conveying processed crude oil for exports are situated. Personnel of the Nigerian Navy are not left out in this task to ensure the criminals are caught
Authorities say more than $3.3bn has been lost to crude oil theft since 2021 and at this time when other oil producers are having a petrodollars largesse, the country can’t even meet its production quota. Hopefully this renewed effort to stop these thieves will help the country to benefit from high cost and demand of the product.
Crude Oil Theft has been identified as the major impediment to the nations’ depleted Oil Production quota with production falling from the 2.3 Million Barrels per Day to less than a Million Barrels per day.
This has also led to the reduction of the nations’ oil revenue and by extension having a negative effect on the Economy.
Pipelines protection contract have also been re-activated and handed out to some private companies who have been helping out in the last few weeks with an increase in the production per day of Crude oil.
