By Egufe Yafugborhi

“From Okrika to Marine Base, Kalabari to Abonnema Wharf, Engenni to Ahoada town, Bodo to Bori, Emohua to Choba, the syndicate profiting from the stealing of crude oil, artisanal refining and distribution of derivatives, mainly kerosene and diesel are well known and they operate with reckless abandon.”

That was how Enefaa Georgewill, Chairman, Rivers State Civil Society Organisations, RIVSCO, described the effrontery with which the operatives of illegal refineries operate in Port Harcourt.

They are popularly known as Kpofire not just in Rivers but also across all the oil-producing states in the Niger Delta.

The Kpofire syndicate involves oil thieves who siphon crude from pipelines, transport it in large wooden boats to artisans who buy and refine the same into various products, mostly kerosene and diesel, because of their economic viability.

It’s hard for residents of Niger Delta to claim ignorance of this illegal business which produces soot that contaminates the air, destroys rivers and aquatic lives, and pollutes land and vegetation. Currently, Port Harcourt is threatened by soot emanating from the illegal refining of crude oil. 

Awakening

“The more we encourage it, pretending it is intractable, the more soot kills us. It now burns our houses and properties”, Enefaa added, referring to the ill-fated Port Harcourt serial fires that burned between November 20 and 21 last year.

The avoidable fires, which truncated livelihood, assumed fatal proportions on the third day in various parts of the Rivers capital, were confirmed to be induced by unsafe, indiscriminate keeping and movement of illegally refined petrol and diesel.
 
Security operatives

Following the first of the fires at a D-Line abandoned warehouse used as an illicit fuel dumpsite in Port Harcourt, a Kpofire operative, simply identified as Friday, said: “Most of all the dumpsites are owned and financed by big men who get returns from us.

“I am not in the cooking section, but we have people who cook the product. We know the product is inflammable but that is the risky side of the job. We take risks to survive in this country.
“I take delivery of what they produce every day. We are not disturbed by security men because we settle them. The only time they come to raid our dump sites is when our ‘Ogas’ do not settle them on time”.
Across the oil and gas operating space, land and waterways, a multiplicity of anti-oil theft and illegal refineries security tactical commands exist. From the Joint Taskforce (JTF) to the Navy, the Nigerian Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC) and the police, security operatives are everywhere in the region.
Between Port Harcourt and Warri, the East-West Road has close to 50 checkpoints comprising the police, NSCDC, Army and, lately, vigilante groups hired by Independent Petroleum Marketers (IPM). The need to ensure security and order informed their deployment to the road.
Nelson Okoro, whose vocation as a pipeline welder takes him on frequent tours of the creeks, said: “Paradoxically, the more security checks are being duplicated, the more the sabotage of oil pipelines and Kpofire is thriving. It is an open secret that the security operatives have become toll collectors.
“The huge wooden (Cotonou) boat operators who supply stolen crude to illegal refiners pay toll at every security point in the creeks. “On the road, tankers ferrying Kpofire pay at every checkpoint.
“Much more than that, security operatives now directly engage in funding, running Kpofire and providing cover for the distribution chain.”

Amnesty
Programme
Findings by Sunday Vanguard reveal that illicit refineries began when the Federal Government under the late President Umaru Yar’ Adua introduced the Amnesty Programme to end militancy in the Niger Delta. This was in line with the implementation of the recommendations made by the Niger Delta Technical Committee (NDTC)
The NDTC had proposed a triangle of reforms, tackling issues of governance and the rule of law, socio-economic development, and human development towards achieving sustainable peace and progress in the region in the atmosphere of stable oil production.
“But beyond gratifying militant leaders with contracts and their foot soldiers with stipend and sundry opportunities, the programme failed to effectively tackle long objectives of equity and justice and socio-economic advancement”, Okoro Emena, a Niger Delta activist, said.
“With a few militant leaders turned into instant money men and many law-abiding Niger Deltans alienated and deprived, something had to give way to the agitations and militancy”.
Barituka Loanyie, Chairman Rivers Oil and Gas Host Communities (CROGHCOM), on his part, recalled thus: “In Ogoni locality, massive oil pollution of the environment under Shell operations truncated farming and fishing which sustained the majority peasants.
“Out of self-preservation, Kpofire was discovered. If you ask the person in the village who does illegal oil bunkering, the common response you get is, some power brokers in Abuja come to the Niger Delta to steal large quantities. Soldiers escort them in vessels into deep water to trans-load to foreign buyers.

“They say what they do in the communities is to take a little, distil into fuel which they sell to sustain their lives. But they don’t realise how bad they endanger their lives and other residents’ with the hazardous Kpofire.”

Stolen

Barituka explained that artisanal refiners deploy what he called crude and easy to set mechanisms to refine their stolen crude.

“The method is an adaptation of the same assemblage used by local distillers of native gin, better known as Ogogoro or kai kai”, he said.

“These people travel miles to get the stolen crude. They then set up a huge fabricated cooking pot which they fill with the crude oil.

“They set it on a furnace fired by huge firewood with the same crude used as a stimulant to intensify the flames.

“The product then undergoes purification by heating so that it vaporises, then cooling and condensing the vapour to collect the resulting liquid which is transferred through a pipe dipped in water into another container.

“Depending on the level of heat deployed, what comes out first, I suppose, is kerosene, then diesel and maybe petrol.

“The first danger involved is the inability to curtail the highly inflammable associated gas in the crude, which a regular refinery separates and discharges safely by flares. Most time, the gas bursts into flames and results in disasters.’’

Diesel

A Kpofire operative in Ahoada, Chidi Manda, further gave insight into their mode of operation

He said: “Believe it or not, we refine kerosene too. But if you’re talking about diesel, we are the ones feeding most parts of the nation at the moment.

“From the moment kerosene and diesel were deregulated, it has never been attractive to importers.

“Not even government that imports diesel through NNPC and distributes it to marketers can bring in enough diesel. We are the ones cooking diesel to feed retail outlets and bulk buying companies.”

Manda had, just before speaking to Sunday Vanguard, hauled in his greasy motorbike three 50liters plastic jerry can of cooked diesel from remote surrounding sites of Kpofire to the spot near Ahoada Bridge where Governor Nysom Wike once destroyed several shanties inhabited by settlers in a bid to rid the state of criminal hideouts.

Months after, the demolition of their makeshift homes has not deterred the settlers from converging to get their share of the booming trade that has made Ahoada the headquarters of Kpofire.

Operatives

Regent of Ekpeye Kingdom in Rivers State, Eze Felix Otuwarikpo, whose domain transverses Ahoada-East and Ahoada-West, Local Government Areas (LGAs), lamented that security agents were encouraging Kpofire operators.

Otuwarikpo said: “Security agents that have the responsibility to help us check these criminals are the ones encouraging criminality in our area. I want it to be on record.

“When we disarmed these boys some time ago, Ekpeyeland became the most peaceful ethnic nationality in the state. Today, security agents are the ones encouraging these boys to carry out bunkering in our area.

“You will agree with me that anywhere you allow bunkering to go on for at least 24 hours, there will be a proliferation of small arms in the area.”

Ailment

Meanwhile, the greater worry today in Rivers is the health scare posed by the soot associated with Kpofire.

In this regard, Barituka recalled: “In 2019, Rivers State Ministry of Environment, under Prof Roseline Konya, released a report of indicating that over 22, 077 Rivers residents were suffering various respiratory ailments.
“The study team, involving 20 experts from interdisciplinary fields, including consultant physician and dermatologist at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Dr. Dasetima Altraide, had conducted investigative studies into the airborne particulate (soot) in Port Harcourt, indicating that illegal bunkering, refining and gas flaring are the two major sources of soot in the state.
“Following a hospital base review of records of the 22,077 persons including men, women, and children who received care for soot-related conditions at health facilities in Rivers, the technical study found adverse respiratory, skin and reproductive conditions related to soot.
“From 2019 till date, you can imagine the level of respiratory ailments may have affected the people”.
With complaints of difficulty in breathing, discomfort in eyes, soot congested nose, ears and throats, experts predicted that chronic respiratory diseases, heart problems, cancer and increase in mortality rate may be staring residents in the face.

Police, NSCDC

On the strength of this, Wike, who is currently leading a war against Kpofire operators, said everybody is to blame.

Receiving the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshall Isiaka Amao, at the Government House, Port Harcourt, recently, the governor said: “Bunkering cannot stop because everybody is involved. The military is involved, the police are involved, and the NSCDC is involved.

“If not, there is no way illegal bunkering can continue.

“I don’t know whether we should take the issue of bunkering to be more serious than treason. If you go around and see what has happened to our environment, you’ll pity us.”
Wike’s position was corroborated by Okoro, who said: “Security agencies allow it so they can enjoy huge funds. Such funds, they would not have if they eradicate it.

“Oil executives allow it so they make money from repairs of vandalized assets and clean-up of attendant pollution.

“Petroleum products marketers allow it because of the cheap diesel from illegal refineries which they supply to industries or retail at importation rates. So many people benefit.”
Given the dangers posed by activities of Kpofire operators, especially health hazards, Wike’s onslaught against artisanal refining, has received the support of many stakeholders in Rivers.

If sustained, the fight against Kpofire and soot could be won in no distant time.
Chairman, Port Harcourt Branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Prince O. Nyekwere, said: “We commend the governor for the bold steps taken against operators of illegal refineries and pledge our support to him while respectfully urging him to sustain the fight until the battle is won.”

Stolen crude

On his part, Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), Dr. Godwin Uyi Ojo, said: “Four years after stakeholders, dissatisfied by government’s refusal to act, protested on the streets of Port Harcourt and to the offices of the governor, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and Shell.

“Rivers State finally decided to take the first tentative steps on the road to dealing with this hydra-headed monster. 

“Though artisanal refining of stolen crude oil is indicated as the current accelerator of soot and ambient air pollution in the Niger Delta, decades of reckless exploration and production activities by multinational companies as Shell, ill-maintained oil pipelines and facilities, routine gas flaring and lax regulatory framework are responsible for the dangerous situation in which millions of people who reside in the Niger Delta region now find themselves.

Respiratory illnesses

“Hospitals across Rivers are reporting marked uptick in patients presenting with respiratory illnesses, especially young children whose lungs are unable to withstand the constant poisoning from air pollution.

“There are also reports of an increase in patients suffering severe burns from explosions resulting from utilising improperly refined kerosene from artisanal refining processes.

“Governments of other Niger Delta states need to take similar actions by identifying and properly decommissioning all artisanal stolen crude oil refining sites in their states to halt this self-inflicted destruction of our environment and unnecessary loss of lives.

Coercion

“We call for the development of a holistic framework that addresses both the supply of artisanal products and the high demands for these products in our communities which include the rising cost of living, unemployment, and severe impact from hydrocarbon pollution on rural livelihoods.

“There is the need to provide alternative income generation sources for these youths to discourage them from the illegal act, hence government at all levels must as a matter of necessity diversify our economy from oil and gas dependence and towards a transition to renewable energy sources such as solar mini-grid and off-grid systems.”

Vanguard News Nigeria