Oil theft in Nigeria
Posted on November 12, 2009 – 6:50 pm | by oilandgaspress.com
SECURITY agents were yesterday put on the high alert over the high rate of illegal bunkering and theft in the oil sector.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, who raised the alarm, challenged security agents to “code Nigeria’s crude oil to prevent its theft through bunkering by international criminal gangs and their local collaborators.”
To him, the nation loses more than N1 trillion yearly through the theft.
Bankole, while delivering a lecture entitled “Towards Effective Budgetary Provisions for the Realisation of the Security Component of the Seven-Point Agenda” for participants of the Executive Intelligence Management Course 2 at the Institute of Security Studies, Bwari, Abuja, said: “At least, half of Nigeria’s crude oil in the international market is stolen through bunkering with the attendant loss to the nation in terms of revenue and reserve whose duration will be shortened.”
“If it is to be assumed that our oil reserves are to last for a hundred years, it will now be shortened to 50 years because they would have stolen 50 per cent of it.”
Bankole said that if the coding is done as was the case of “blood diamonds” in the then war-torn Sierra Leone, “its origin can be easily traced to Nigeria’s crude at any refinery all over the world.”
He maintained that Nigerian security agencies should brainstorm on how to achieve this “as it is a security issue with implications for the nation’s economic development and the security of the Niger Delta.”
“Our revenue base needs to be diversified from the present 90 per cent from oil to include the yearly revenue generated by MDAs to the tune of almost a trillion naira that is not remitted as they should constitutionally. A trillion naira is a quarter of our annual budget.
“If the unmerited revenue is made part of the budget, the pressure on the crude oil from Niger Delta would have been reduced with serious economic implications for the Niger Delta and the entire nation.
“The National Assembly, particularly the House of Representatives, will continue to accord security matters the attention it deserves. This is what informed the passage of the President’s supplementary Budget in a record time of 24 hours without any change to fund the amnesty programme and associated security issues in the Niger Delta,” he added.
Tags: Abuja, Bwari, Niger Delta, Security Studies
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