Tackling crude theft and corruption on the coasts
Nigeria loses thousands of barrels of crude oil daily to crooks and thieves seemingly flourishing unimpeded on the coast lines of the nation, particularly in the Niger Delta area. Reports suggest that these unlawful activities cost the country over 250,000 barrels of crude oil per day, estimated at almost $4 billion.
However, the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) is reportedly taking the bull by the horns to tackle this ugly trend. The initiative is aimed at trying to get what is called vessel by vessel data. NEITI is expected to work with the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) to identify all the crude oil lifting vessels on Nigerian waters.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a NEITI source told BusinessDay, “Once we have this, all we need to do is to install what we call a GPS device on each of these vessels so that at a glance on my PC I know where each vessel is in this country and once it is leaving Nigeria’s waters, longitude and latitude we know that it is going out of Nigeria’s waters.
Immediately, I will call NIMASA, I may call their operations controller at sea and say vessel with registration number so and so is leaving Nigeria’s territorial waters can you tell me the volume or crude it has on that vessel, everything becomes automated.
NIMASA has the marine registration number for every vessel in this country they should be able to provide us the vessel data of each vessel that lifts crude in this country, do we have that? Yes, we do, but you have to force the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), or you have to beg, you have to wait, persevere, coerce before they give you that data.”
The Nigerian oil and gas industry is infamous for corruption and general opaque transactions and activities. Experts have said that if 10,000 barrels of crude are pumped from a flow station to the crude oil terminal, we should be able to tell which particular tank those barrels of crude have gone into. And if 10,000 barrels of crude are pumped into a vessel, the name of the vessel should be known. Also, the date the vessel berthed and its destination should be known. All of which would go a long way to change the industry from being opaque to being transparent.
Exposing another dimension of the deceit in the sector in a recent interview, Director-General of NIMASA, Patrick Akpobolokemi, alleged that petrol importers have continued to steal millions of dollars from the nation annually by pretending to import products from abroad.
He noted that most of the importers actually get their products from local refineries and when they get to the Lagos waters, they discharge same into another vessel. The NIMASA boss further explained that the new ship was then taken outside the nation’s territorial waters and returned into the country with the claim that they have imported the product.
