Oil Theft: To Save An Industry
THE Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria painted a vivid picture of how Nigeria hemorrhages, when its Managing Director Mutiu Sunmonu laid bare before the media the alarming rate of oil pipeline vandalism and oil theft being visited on the company’s Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL) since last January. Within the past two months, Shell alone claims to have lost about 60,000 barrels of crude oil per day, which was the highest in the past three years. He recounted that the second half of last year witnessed the peak of the activities of the military Joint Task Force (JTF) during which time there was a significant drop in vandalism. Sunmonu said that the loss to the economy through oil theft was huge, but the accompanying massive oil spills portended social and environmental devastation in the Niger Delta region. The activities of oil thieves have reached both crisis and crunch points which, if not brought under control, would necessitate shutting down the NCTL, which handles 150,000 barrels per day, in order to save the environment from complete devastation. Read more
