A shift in strategy by Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production Company and Nigerian Agip Oil Company has aided in reducing crude oil theft in the past two years, some experts have noted.
The new strategy being employed by the oil companies is to award their pipeline surveillance jobs to community-based contractors who work in synergy with security agencies, including the Joint Task Force (JTF), to thwart the activities of vandals.
An environmentalist, Ayibapreye Yengizifa, in a recent interview with newsmen in Yenagoa, said observations at some oilfields in Bayelsa State operated by Aiteo and Agip were benefiting from such synergy.
Yengizifa stated that the combined efforts of the surveillance contractors and the military were more effective as the locals know the terrain and their people and joint patrols and raids were based on credible intelligence.
According to Yengizifa, such synergy has resulted in seizure of “large volumes of stolen crude and destruction of illegal refineries.” Previous templates of giving surveillance contracts failed because the contractors and their personnel were strange to the oil fields they were supposed to protect.
A community rights activist, Samuel Odusi, said governments at all levels should sustain current efforts at curbing pipeline vandalism by making further investments in clean up, remediation and pollution control activities.
Odusi also stressed the need for review of community development strategies deployed by oil firms due to the marginal impact on target audience by the funds they spend on projects.
He noted the case of Oloibiri where Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria claimed to have spent on Oloibiri Health Project, saying, “If you visit Oloibiri communities in Ogbia Local Government Area, you will realise that such figures merely exist on paper.”
Continuing, he stated that the “neglect of oil bearing communities should be stopped so that sabotage of oil pipelines due to the perceived injustice by the host communities would also stop.”
Odusi therefore called on the Federal Government to review the mode of releasing the 13 percent derivation funds to ensure that the impact was felt by oil-bearing communities in the Niger Delta region.
