Oil theft and imperative of implosive surgeonisation

“In all economic activities, man is everything.

The supplier and demander, producer and consumer,

Initiator, innovator, motivator, accelerator,

Multiplier and distributor, the be-all and the

End–all, the alpha and omega”-Chief Obafemi Awolowo (VOICE OF COURAGE)

ANY nation, state, collectivity or institution that is cocooned in the tenebrous oubliette and horrendous labyrinth of corruption and thievery in all things cannot walk the promenades of greatness. Hence, such moral contretemps will precipitate the mortal entropy of “venit summa dies et ineluctile tempus” (the last day has come and the evitable doom). Is this what is happening or going to happen to Nigeria and its oil industry in   the light of crude oil theft?

The Nigerian mono-cultural economy that is 99.9% dependent on oil is now facing total asphyxiation because it is being hounded, hectored and hunted by crude oil and petroleum thieves. Since the discovery of crude oil at Oloibiri, Bayelsa State in 1956 and its subsequent commercialisation in 1958, the Nigerian nation has not known peace because of corruption in the oil industry, the Nigerian leadership’s skewed permutations on prices, pipeline vandalization, crude oil theft and general policy somersaults, etc.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, was establish by decree in April 1977 as successor to the Nigerian National Oil Corporation, NNOC, which was established by the Nigerian Government in 1971 to concretize and mosomophically solidify the bases of the strategic oil industry. The NNPC has undergone rainbow and multi-dimensional restructuring to enhance its efficiency index, functionality potentials and growth quotient. The administrative organogram is dichotomised along directorate lines, each headed by a Group Executive Director.

The directorate has the National Petroleum Investment and Management Services, NAPIMS, which is the division of the Exploration and Production Directorate which oversees the Federations nearly 60 percent Investment in joint operations and engages in direct exploration services. The upstream subsidiaries include the National Petroleum Development Company, NPDC, engaged in exploration and production, Integrated Data Services Limited, IDSL, engaged in seismic data processing and the Nigerian Gas Company, NGC, engaged in oil field gas treatment and distribution to industrial consumers.

The downstream subsidiaries include the Kaduna refinery and Petrochemicals Company, KRPC, Port Harcourt Refinery Company Limited, PHRC and Warri Refinery and Petrochemicals Company, WRPC- all engaged in processing crude oil, Gas and Refinery by-products, Eleme Petrochemical company limited, EPCL, engaged in manufacturing petrochemical products, and Pipelines and Products Marketing Company, PPMC, engaged in petroleum product marketing and distribution. Others include the engineering consulting subsidiary, National Engineering and Technical Services Company, NETCO and the international marketing subsidiaries, Hydrocarbon Services of Nigeria, HYSON and independent marketers of petroleum products. And by fiat the PPPRA and NEITE. These are the statutory bodies mandated and obligated by edicts, decrees and statutes to entrench accountability in the petroleum industry, including Shell and other oil multinationals.

Oil multinational blues:

The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited, SPDC, is the cardinal or arrowhead operator of a joint venture on behalf of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC. Shell is by far the largest hydrocarbon exploration and production company in Nigeria. Shell operated oil fields account for more than half of Nigeria’s proven crude oil reserves.   Shell D’ Arcy Company, was in 1937 granted exclusive right to explore for oil throughout Nigeria. However, it was not until 1956 that Shell-BP made the country’s first discovery of crude oil at Oloibiri in the East Niger Delta, specifically, present day, Bayelsa State.

This kaleidoscope overview of some the companies and institutions involved in the petroleum industry has become necessary to enable us do a candid parallax snaps of those that are working in the system over the years and how they have been the be-all and end–all of what has been transpiring in the petroleum industry and how their commission and or omission has affected the petroleum industry in Nigeria vis-a-vis the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiatives, NEITI, independent report   on crude oil theft, illegal oil bunkering and the vandalisation of oil pipelines, etc.

NEITI Report/scramble for oil:

The recently released independent audit report of NEITI is sound and solid in structure, rich in character, treating matters of moral immaculacy, corruption in the petroleum industry, institutional inertia, administrative lapses and culpability index of partners and major players in the petroleum industry with power and purpose. Indeed, it exposed the clandestine under-belly and furtive backsides of some of the syndicates behind crude oil theft, illegal bunkering and pipeline vandalism in Nigeria. But it was short on figures and specificities on fraudulent manipulations in the oil and gas sector.

NEITI in its report demanded that the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, should return N4.423 billion to the Federation Account and that the NNPC and other grotesque firms should return N 3.715 billion being “over- recovery” for the period under review (2009-2011). The report further asserts that a total sum of N273 billion accruing from crude oil sales has not been remitted to the Federation Account and that a total of 136 million barrels of crude oil estimated at $10.9 billion was lost to crude oil theft and the report went on to state that a total payment of N3 trillion was made to importers of refined petroleum products. Shell, the Royal Dutch company also claimed that it incurred losses totaling $700 million in its global earning due to Nigeria’s operational challenges. Virtually, all crude oil and gas operators, especially oil multinationals, are all singing the same commercial of loss of revenues due to operational challenges (hostile oil communities, pipeline vandalism, illegal oil bunkering and crude oil theft).

THIEVES IN THE HOUSE:

Some Ijaw / Urhobo / Itsekiri adages runs thus, “the worm that eats the kola-nut is inside the kola-nut” and “how can a man be circumspect and careful with a witch in his own house” and “it is the rat   in the house that invites the ones outside into the house”. It is clear without a tincture of doubt that the petroleum industry is filled with all kinds of players and the oil thieves are from there and beyond. It is now clearly obvious, that pipeline vandalism, crude oil theft, and illegal oil bunkering and other horrendously fraudulent act in the oil industry are carried out by Nigerians and their recruited surrogates in the NNPC, some of it’s subsidiaries and oil multinational companies etc.

As for refined product, barring the reckless action of desperate and psychotic thieves, it is only the Pipelines and Products Marketing Staffers that know the kind of products being pumped down the pipelines at any point – in – time. It is they who know whether it is Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), Automotive Gas Oil (AGO), Dual Purpose Kerosene (DPK), and High Pour Quality Fuel Oil (HPFO), Low Pour Quality Fuel Oil (LPFO), JET A1 etc. They give the information to the criminal syndicates who now position the tankers and barges to siphon the products.

IMPERATIVE OF IMPLOSIVE SURGEONISATION:

The NEITI report has also been befuddled by vortexes and counter- vortexes of denials, accusations and contradictions. In a joint meeting between NEITI and PPPRA at the instance of Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), the two agencies said that the missing fund has indeed been deposited in the Petroleum Support Fund (PSF) domiciled with the Central Bank of Nigeria.

The Joint Reconciliation Meeting also posited that the two organizations have devised strategies aimed at addressing other matters arising from the NEITI 2009-2011 audit report through the instrumentality of the Inter- Ministerial Task Team (IMTT) set up by the President to address remedial issues arising from the audit report. This belated accounts fence mending is seen by critics as a jigsaw puzzle calculated to bamboozle the Nigerian masses and launder the image of the Jonathan’s administration.

Virtually all the oil companies indicted by the NEITI REPORT have all denied the allegations made against them. The Acting Group General manager Group Public Affairs Division, NNPC, Abuja echoing the retort of the current Group Managing Director, Mr. Andrew Yakubu said “Under the current Group Managing Director, Mr. Andrew Yakubu, the NNPC recorded an all-high 2.7 million barrels of crude oil per day last   year. But this evadable feat was short-lived because of Crude theft, oil bunkering and the incessant vandalization of crude oil pipelines”.

He further posited that “in as much as the NNPC is not a perfect organization just like any other, it should be objectively criticized and not vilified all the time. Efforts should be made to appreciate its challenges. Some of these negative publications and destructive criticisms have far-readily implications on the business relationship between the Corporation and its International Partners. They impact also on the nation’s ability to bring in investors”. But he was silent on whether the NNPC is guilty as charged or whether it will refund the money demanded by NEITI REPORT. SO THERE ARE NO OIL THIEVES AND THE NNPC IS NOT INVOLVED?

It is however clear from the politicization of the report and the culture of gross impurity and defiance being played by the castigated oil companies that the sysiphyean albatross of oil bunkering, crude oil theft, pipeline vandalization and corruption in the oil industry will linger on in the deepest recesses of our national and petroleum industry’s psyche for along time to come. The essayist Charles Spureon said “the door to the temple of wisdom is knowledge of our own ignorance”.

THE NIGER DELTA BLUES:

The oil theft and accoutrements of malfeasances in the Niger Delta will continue because the people of the Niger Delta continue to suffer ecosidal devastation,fauna despoliation, environmental pollution, seismic hazards and scorching poverty in the light of gas flaring, oil exploration and exploitation in their backyards.

The so-called Interventionist agencies have turned out to be Mephistophelean placeboes and conduits for politicians to feather their nests. The crude oil theft is a form of economic remonstration, existential militancy and protestation by the Niger Delta people and freedom fighters and it can only be stopped through the approval and granting of the long demanded 50% derivation formula, implementation of free education, free medical care at all levels, massive employment beyond the Amnesty programme initiative, massive industrialization of oil producing communities, rehabilitation and compensation of displaced persons and communities as a result of oil exploitation and exploration, the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) must be signed into law with soldierly brevity, the entry and exit points into Nigeria’s nautical and littoral contours must be manned by patriotic security apparatchiks, the Federal Government must build floating stations in the Riverine Areas and endeavour to create an all-embracing enabling environment for socio-economic progress in the Niger Delta and all Oil producing states in Nigeria.

Apart from Conventional Security Agencies, the Federal Government and the NNPC should award surveillance contracts to specific communities on land and water where the pipelines passes to guard and protect the pipelines and the traditional rulers, chiefs and youth groups should be given roles to play in this regard. They should also furnish the Nigerian Navy and Marine Police with Sea – going Security vessels, marine technology for tracking ships and there should be the erection of nautical barricades on the river to check ships, barges, boats and other water craft vessels etc for bunkering clearance etc.

TO SALVAGE THE PIN FROM THE POT:

The NNPC must establish product measurement, calibration, oil metering and product deep mechanisms to know the quantity of product and capacity of the loaded tanker/vessel to enable us keep record of products been loaded within and outside Nigeria. The theft will continue with reckless abandon if there is no metering system to forestall oil theft. The National Assembly must legislatively discourage oil theft through legal provisions and laws, specifically ‘Death Penalty’ for crude oil theft, petroleum bunkering and corruption. The cardinal economic power of Nigeria as a country straddles between its Oil and expansive geographical make-up. If we lose or fall out of our inability to manage our success it will be ‘Boom turned to Doom’. We must visit oil thieves and oil bunkerers with the uttermost capital punishment.

A special surveillance group of fifth columnists must be set up to monitor the oligarchical collectivity, politicians, oil multinationals, the NNPC its subsidiaries and their criminal syndicates. The brutal truth and consistent with an Okpe proverb is that it is the worm in the kola nut that eats the kola nut’ (Owhore rorhie evwro, evu evwro oha wo). Oil theft cannot take place without some of these oil-allied corporate persons and their cabaliscally clandestine surrogates.

It must be emphasized that the machinery of honesty and patriotism in the NNPC subsidiaries of Pipelines and Products Marketing Company Ltd. (PPMC) and the Directorate of Petroleum Resources (DPR), that are statutorily mandated to act as watchdogs and distributor of products must be revamped, returbisled and implosively surgeonised not only from grassroot levels but from root hairs base to tree top height. They must come out to carry out the upstream and downstream responsibilities with pertinacious exactitude, accountability and transparency.

The crude and refined petroleum syndicate organogram is a pot-purri of politicians, NNPC Subsidiaries’ Executives, Tank Owners, Barge owners, Ship owners, Tug Boat Owners, Product Monitoring (Upstream and Downstream) Task Forces, Oil Producing Communities, Illegal Refinery owners, Militants, frustrated and unemployed Youths   in a state of poverty, Product and Petroleum Sales 419ers, etc.

It is such a power full syndicate that stopping them could be likened to a cow passing through the eye of a needle. The syndicate is so interwoven and committed. It runs from crude oil production Company Executives and Staffers to refined product sales of distributing company executives and now that the political parties have joined, it is virtually finish with the Nigeria economy. Every body wants their share before the oil dries up and depreciates in value.

There is the scramble for oil in Nigeria before “Shale Oil” take over. It is must be stated with unequivocal clarity and it is a platitudinous truism, that the Nigerian nation has earned quintillions of dollars/ pounds/ naira right from 1958( the year of oil commercialization) till date. But 90% of Nigerians have nothing to show for it. There is ludibrastic and scandalous poverty in Nigeria. This has precipitated armed robbery, kidnapping, 419, assassinations, political thuggery, Youth Restiveness, Burglary and Militancy.

The earnings from oil and gas have found their way into the hands of the leadership cartels, desperate politicians, political parties and warlords etc.   In the Niger Delta and nay Nigeria we have no qualitative free education at all levels, no water, no shelter, no roads, no hospitals, no food security, no employment etc. In desperacy fuelled by poverty, vengeful spirit and frustration, Nigerians resort to criminality in the oil industry and beyond.

As always, the “NEITI REPORT “will only be in the news for a short while, because the ‘syndicate’ will dismember and manacle all its salient recommendations and findings in the cesspit of bravura crudity and parenthetical placidity. The silent revolution is incubating in the womb of time. Euripides observed in “FRAGMENTS” that “time will reveal everything. It is a babbler and speaks even when not asked “and Julia Fletcher Carney said “little drops of water, little grants of sand, make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land. So the little Minutes, humble though they be, make the mighty ages of eternity”.

Mr. BOBSON GBINIJE, a commenator on national issues, wrote from Warri, Delta State.