Private security firms helping to discover illegal pipelines – Kyari

Mele Kyari, group chief executive officer, of Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, has said that private security companies are helping the corporation discover illegal taps on pipelines which are crimping oil production and government revenue

Kyari said on Tuesday at the annual PENGASSAN Energy and Labour Summit 2022 tagged “Energy Transition and its effect on the workforce in the Nigerian oil and gas sector, held in Abuja. According to Kyari, monumental progress in preventing oil theft has been achieved.

“In the next couple of days, a number of pipeline assets will come back on stream. This will no doubt provide the resources that will be required to go back to work and invest and also provide resources for our country so that other infrastructural development in the country can be delivered,” he said.

Kyari noted that many of the crude oil theft points couldn’t have been discovered except with the connections of professionals. He further said it was the duty of everyone to prevent oil theft in the country.

“We don’t mince words about the fact that the involvement of private security companies in this journey has helped us.

“Many of the discoveries we made today could not have been done without local knowledge, access to the people, supporting the local people who are used by some of the criminals to perpetrate some of these things for very little things that they give them.

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Now, they are involved and supporting us in the recovery of these assets and we are very proud of their intervention,” the NNPC boss added.

In August this year, Kyari justified the government’s decision to award a multi-billion naira pipelines surveillance contract to Tantita Security Services led by former militant leader, Government Ekpemepulo, also known as Tompolo.

Tompolo’s firm recently made startling revelations on crude oil theft in the Niger Delta region. He said about 58 illegal oil points have been discovered so far since the operation to end oil theft on the waterways of Delta and Bayelsa States began.

Earlier this month, NNPC uncovered an illegal four-kilometre pipeline from Forcados in Delta State to the sea and a loading port that was part of an elaborate crude theft operation for the last nine years.

He further stated that, in the course of the clamp down, the company has destroyed 350 illegal refineries, 273 wooden and 374 reservoirs. In addition, 1, 561 metal tanks were destroyed while over 49 seized trucks were burnt among others.

However, Femi Falana, on Monday, during an interview with a local broadcast station in the country, described the contract to Tompolo as a “colossal embarrassment” to security agencies in the country, adding that it is a loss of confidence in all the service chiefs who should have resigned.