Dignitaries at the MARAN maiden annual lecture.

As the fight against the menace of oil theft continues, it has been revealed that private security firms engaged in this fight save Nigeria over $43.2million daily on the average.  

This is despite the various tactics applied by criminals to deepen their activities in this illicit trading.

The revelation came on Wednesday at the maiden edition of Maritime Reporters’ Association of Nigeria (MARAN) Annual Lecture, at the Rockview hotel, Apapa, Lagos.

Also revealed at the conference is that foreign vessels spend $50,000 for security patrols in Nigeria.

The Executive Director, Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited, one of the private security contractors of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), Captain Warredi Enisuoh, while disclosing this in his presentation at the event lamented that activities around oil theft not only cause pollution that have rendered some farm lands useless.  

He said perpetrators of this crime have deepened their act with CCTV cameras mounted at some places in the bush and creeks to monitor and know when security operatives are coming after them. However, he said the more they do such the more we improve in our technology to combat them.

His words: “We have places where grass may not grow for the next 100 years because of crude oil theft and associated activities. In the past, these operators utilised fire to process the crude oil but they realised that security operators have drones and night vision capabilities to see the fire trails.

“So, they moved to electricity. When they realised we discovered their illicit activities with electricity, they translated to phosphoric acid. They pour the crude oil into several drums and pour phosphoric acid and wait for six hours for the acid to convert the crude to diesel that will be fetched from the top.”

Warredi, who is also a former Director of Shipping Development at the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), observed that having chased most of the perpetrators of crude oil theft away from the land areas, they moved to the creeks to attack oil well heads.

“They connect hoses from the wellheads into their storage. These transactions usually take place at night as they go to the wellheads with canoes to fetch crude oil without minding the pollution or possibility of fire outbreak. If the pressure isn’t strong enough, they use a reservoir to fetch the oil. Some of these oil connections flow through cassava farms and farm settlements that you wouldn’t suspect to be involved in crude oil theft,” Warredi said.

Saddened according to him, is that some of these perpetrators are on the pay roll of Tantita, to cushion the clamour to compensate indigenes of Niger Delta on the ground that their land has been destroyed by crude oil production, yet they embark on this illicit trade.

He disclosed that the illicit trade is not only carried out in Niger Delta but also in Imo State and some other states in the nation.

On the activities of private security operators in Secure Anchorage Area (SAA), Warredi wondered why a nation would carve out a portion on water like a land and sell it to somebody.

“With SAA, a vessel is entering the place and you say no you cannot enter here because you did not pay. However, the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) declared the right of passage on the waters for vessels?

“Nigeria is a signatory to that law, so I am sorry if I made mistakes at that time with my conviction about SAA. Nonetheless, I still stand by it. I will never ever entertain the situation in my country where people will pay to access the waters,” Warredi maintained.

In his presentation, a former Director General of NIMASA, Barrister Temisan Omatseye, argued that since the end of the SAA contract operated by Ocean Marine Solutions Limited (OMSL), foreign vessels spend an average of $50,000 for security patrols in the country.

He observed that OMSL SAA activities created a degree of comfort for global shipowners and filled a lacuna in securing the anchorage area.

Omatseye posited that the Deep Blue Project assets could be deployed to fill the missing role of SAA, stressing that service could be free or at a much-subsidised cost since the former operators were adjudged to be extorting shipowners.

He proposed a Response Zone Transit Corridor concept to create a patrolled transit corridor in the key high-risk areas in the Nigerian exclusive exclusive zone (EEZ).

“A 100 nautical mile transit corridor could be created to support vessels moving in and out of Bonny/Onne/Port Harcourt. The corridor will be permanently patrolled by 10 security vessels providing a guaranteed response to an area 50 nautical miles wide and 110 nautical miles long of a maximum 60 minutes dependent on location of incident.

“A drifting area at the outer limit of the transit corridor would replace requirements inshore for secured anchorage. The same concept could also cover between Lagos and Escravos areas, giving security guarantee up to 50 nautical mile offshore,” he said.

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