The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation NNPC has pledged to work with the Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) to run the pipelines and oil thieves out of business very soon. This is a good development but industry operators are not too impressed with the new romance between the two parties because all efforts in the past to tame this menace have yielded very little result.
This is however not the first time such arrangement between the government and para military and military outfits have been entered into with the aim of arresting the ugly situation of pipeline vandalism and oil thieves.
The activities of the vandals and oil thieves have caused a lot of damage to the Nigerian economy but the problem still persists despite all the efforts. At the height of the Goodluck Jonathan administration the activities of these criminal got to the point that service chiefs were assembled in Lagos to discuss the issue and plan the strategy on how to arrest the problem.
Special fund was made available for the military to fight this menace but instead the military personnel could not live above board. Some of themselves were alleged to have gotten enmeshed in the activities of the vandals and became over night millionaires through this nefarious activity. They deploy all manners of tactics to get money from operating oil companies yet the volume of pressure of crude oil pumped to flow stations constant dropped because some thieves have tampered with the pipelines with the military looking the other side.
The challenges relating to the prevalence of militancy and pipeline vandalism has resulted in NNPC a losing 157.81million tons of petroleum products in 2017. This is aside from the direct loss of revenue in terms of crude oil theft and pipeline vandalism.
The Federal Government was said to have lost over N3.8 trillion to shortfall in oil production due to militants’ attacks and oil theft in a few year back.
Specifically, Nigeria is said to have lost about 700,000 barrels daily throughout last year, for which at the oil price of $50 per barrel, the country would have lost $35 million (N10.6 billion) daily, amounting to N3.8 trillion.
The questions is what would NSCDC do to make a difference and reduce the level of pipeline vandalism and help to enable products flow freely to the over 20 depots scattered across the country?.
Mallam Kyari who disclosed at meeting with Commandant General of the Corps, Muhammadu, who represented by Deputy Commandant General, Aminu Abdullahi that as part of efforts to rid the nation of the menace of pipeline breaks, the new management was putting in place a performance-based pipeline protection system to enable relevant security stakeholders to live up to their billings.
The NNPC boss noted that the collaboration between the NNPC and NSCDC had gone a long way in ensuring uninterrupted supply and distribution of petroleum products through the pipelines and various depots.
He applauded the NSCDC for contributing its quota towards protection and security of our pipelines. “Their efforts have made our pipelines to be available for the transportation of petroleum products from one asset to another petroleum asset,” Mallam Kyari averred.
Operators believed that Mele Kyari was making political statement when he received the officials of NSCDC because their views are that there is just little or no improvement as most of the pipelines are castrated hence the huge number of Petroleum tankers on our roads today.
They believed that the government has spent so much on the pipelines to protect them but the results it is getting is not commensurate to the money spent to protects them.
While no one is not playing down the fact that there is need for serious protection over these valuable assets, the NNPC should be mindful of the pitfalls that have bedevilled the previous arrangements and tightened all loose ends in this current arrangement which may make it effective.
Olusola Bello
