By Grace Udofia

EFFORTS geared towards blocking leakages in the petroleum industry seem not to be yielding the desired results, as pipeline vandalism and crude oil theft had over the years served as a major setback in the sector, disrupting businesses, discouraging investments and increasing expenses. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, in its Annual Statistic Bulletin 2015, disclosed that a total of N242.778 billion was lost to pipeline vandalism in different parts of the country.

*File Photo: Activity at a vandalised oil pipe

Also, the NNPC said that pipeline oil losses for all crude types from 2012 to 2014, stood at N119.650 billion. In 2012, Bonny Light recorded a total loss of N15.660 billion from a total of N65.812 billion; in 2013, N14.598 billion losses out of N38.992billion; and in 2014, N264million out of N14.846 billion for the year.

For the Escravos Light, NNPC reported that N35.468 billion was lost in 2012, while N14.598 billion was lost in 2013; and N8.635 billion 2014. In the case of URALS there was no record of pipeline vandalism in 2012 and 2014, but lost  N433 million in 2013. The report said the Ughelli Blend recorded N14.683 billion losses to vandals in 2012, down to N210 million in 2013, and rose again in 2014 to N5.026 billion. But Seplat lost about N919 million in 2014 only.

Socio-economic impacts

NNPC spokesman, Mr. OhiAlegbe, noted that incessant vandalism had also undermined the ability to pump petroleum products from the various depots, sometimes inducing scarcity, which impacts negatively on socio-economic activities. He said: “Every litre of oil that is stolen or spilled represents a portion of our collective wealth that is stolen or wasted. It is quite a pity that the activities of vandals persist in spite of the efforts being made by the government and security agents to address the problem.”

Speaking on the development, Mr. Peter Amah, of the Department of Finance, University of Lagos, noted that oil theft reduces the potential revenue of the country, which has a significant impact on the economy, and called on the Federal Government to tackle the issue headlong. He said, “Pipeline vandalism affects us on two fronts, internally; pipeline vandalism disrupts the flow of gas to our power plants, this is one of the reasons we keep talking about power generation capacity. On the other hand, the gargantuan theft reduces the potential and revenue earning for government.”

“On the issue of giving some organisation the contract to monitor pipelines, the government will need to reassess that strategy whether that is actually working according to the government’s expectation.” Continuing, he added, “Even the Navy, Police and the cooperation of the locals and traditional institutions will all have to come together to fight this menace. The government also will have to put in place all the mechanisms involving this collaboration.

Securing ofplatforms

“You cannot entirely depend on some amour force militant organisation to secure your platforms, that is not sustainable. At times, some of these organisations may be working for selfish purposes, but if the communities through which this pipelines passe are working with the Police and the Navy, I think we may have better results.”

Also speaking, the Chief Executive Officer, Folster Group, Mr. Belema Cookey, called for a socio-cultural solution and the creation of awareness in the host communities where these pipelines are laid.

According to him, the communities should be made to see the oil assets as theirs, and be given some equity, and by so doing, they would not want to vandalise the pipelines. Rather, they will want to protect them if they have that kind of involvement in the security of these pipelines. “On the engineering part, there is what we call the surveillance which is ongoing now; there are technologies in the advanced countries where they use wireless data for surveillance. There is a technology called SCADA used for pipeline monitoring and surveillance,” he noted.

“Whenever there is vandalism you will see the areas but that has to do with the implementation of these wireless technologies. Some of these companies have these data transfer from their offshore areas even though it ought to be national. I don’t think we have that for the pipelines, if we do, it will be a transparent monitoring system,” he added.

He continued: “It is just for the government to call professionals in the field to design a model for them, it will save a lot of cost. Also, there are speculations that some Navy officials are involved in oil theft and even the oil operators at the terminal. If we have this wireless computerised system, anywhere we have vandalism there will be immediate check.”

“If we have these devices in those terminals, the monitoring will help us to know the volume and very easy to quantify. We also need to have a quantification of our crude oil to be able to check this menace. Another way to check this is through the vessels that come to carry the crude; they have dimensions, when the vessels come from their dimensions we know how much volume they can take in, which helps to check the actual crude export that goes out of the terminals.”