The Nigerian Navy has described those behind large-scale crude oil theft in the country as highly coordinated and sophisticated criminal syndicates, saying the scale of stolen crude indicates the involvement of organised networks with substantial financial resources, logistical capacity and maritime capabilities.
The Director of Naval Information at Naval Headquarters, Captain Folorunsho Abidemi, made the disclosure on Thursday while appearing on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme.
Abidemi said the volume of crude involved in some theft operations makes it impossible to classify the perpetrators as petty criminals, stressing that moving crude oil in metric tonnes requires ships, detailed planning, logistics and significant financial investment.
“I think it was last week, we are having conversations around how we can have severe deterrence for these syndicates that are very, very coordinated and very, very sophisticated,” he said.
The naval spokesman was speaking in the context of discussions surrounding the arrest of MT Philly, a vessel intercepted by the Nigerian Navy in July.
According to Abidemi, the huge financial rewards associated with successful crude oil theft provide enough incentive for individuals and groups to pool resources and invest heavily in sophisticated operations.
“You don’t, to steal crude at that scale, you must have some way to be able to make it happen,” he said.
“When you’re talking about metric tonnes, you’re talking about ships and you know what it takes to operate at sea. It’s not something that you just come by on the road.”
He said the Navy’s responsibility was to identify such operations and prevent the networks behind them from successfully moving stolen crude through Nigerian waters.
“But again, when you look at the reward for a successful heist, you would understand why people will band it together. People will invest in stuff like this to ensure that they’re able to take some of this for themselves,” he said.
Abidemi’s remarks suggest that the Navy views large-scale crude oil theft as an organised criminal enterprise involving multiple actors rather than isolated individuals operating independently.
He said the Nigerian military had strengthened its ability to detect and intercept vessels suspected of engaging in illegal activities within Nigeria’s maritime domain.
According to him, the Nigerian Navy has advanced maritime surveillance equipment that makes it increasingly difficult for large vessels to operate undetected in Nigerian waters and within the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone.
“The Nigerian Navy has, over the years, due to some mistaken investments by the federal government, one of the finest maritime surveillance equipment,” he said.
He further claimed that it was “almost impossible” for vessels to operate within Nigerian waters and the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone without being detected by the Navy’s surveillance systems.
Abidemi explained that once a vessel is identified as suspicious, naval personnel can move to intercept it and prevent the suspected operation from succeeding.
“That’s why when they start, we would see, and then we would immediately intercept to make sure that it’s unsuccessful,” he said.
The naval spokesman also disclosed that the Navy had deployed personnel trained by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited to crude oil loading stations as part of efforts to strengthen monitoring and prevent the diversion of crude.
He said the personnel are involved in what he described as fiscalisation, a process that enables naval authorities to cross-check the quantity of crude approved for a vessel against the quantity it actually loads.
“Beyond the approvals that have been given by NNPC, we’re able to check to be sure that what every vessel has been allotted to them is what they would eventually load,” Abidemi said.
He explained that the monitoring process also enables naval operatives to verify the documentation of vessels intercepted at sea.
According to him, documents found aboard an intercepted vessel can be checked against records from loading terminals to establish whether the vessel’s cargo and quantity correspond with what was officially approved and loaded.
“That way, even when our operatives or our ships intercept vessels at sea, we can check their papers to be sure that it corresponds with what was loaded at the loading terminals, and it is in tandem with what was approved by the federal government,” he said.
The system, according to Abidemi, is intended to strengthen accountability throughout the crude oil supply chain by allowing authorities to compare what was approved, what was loaded at the terminal and what a vessel is found carrying at sea.
He said the measures would make it increasingly difficult for organised crude oil theft networks to move large quantities of petroleum resources through Nigeria’s maritime territory.
The naval spokesman was emphatic that the people involved in large-scale crude oil theft should not be regarded as ordinary thieves.
“These are not petty thieves,” he said, describing those behind the operations as people who have “come together and said this is a way of life.”
Crude oil theft and illegal oil bunkering have remained longstanding challenges in Nigeria’s oil-producing region, with the activities blamed for losses in government revenue, reduced crude production, environmental degradation and damage to oil-bearing communities.
The activities have also continued to attract the attention of security agencies because of the resources and networks required to illegally tap, transport and sell crude oil on a large scale.
The Nigerian Navy has in recent years intensified maritime patrols, surveillance operations and vessel interceptions as part of efforts to combat illegal crude oil activities within Nigeria’s territorial waters and the Gulf of Guinea.
Abidemi said the Navy would continue to deploy its surveillance and interception capabilities against suspected oil theft networks, stressing that the objective was to ensure that vessels involved in the illegal movement of crude do not successfully transport stolen petroleum resources out of Nigerian waters.