Oil Theft: Why Oil Operations in Nigeria Should Shut Down Completely- HOMEF
By Ekemini Simon
A Non Governmental Organisation, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) has recommended a complete shut down of operations in the Nigerian oil sector as an immediate solution to the high level of oil theft going on in Nigeria.
HOMEF says the shutting down of the sector completely may well be the immediate solution that will help players in the sector to spend some time in soul searching and repentance.
The media have been recently flooded with reports of mind-blowing oil theft in Nigeria’s Niger Delta.
In a statement by the Director of HOMEF, Nnimmo Bassey and made available to newsmen, HOMEF said rather than being numbed by the level of oil theft which it described as monstrous pillaging of the nation, Nigerians should wake up to the wake-up call, especially in consideration that this is happening in an election season.
The statement read in part “The immediate solution may well be to shut down the sector completely and spend some time in soul searching and repentance. Does it not put a lie to official insistence that the petroleum sector is the lifeline of the nation’s economy?”
“Or that the energy needs of the nation would only be met by continued extraction of crude oil? The series of exposé we read these days, including that of the stealing of natural gas, clearly show that the nation faces a grave future and that something must be done immediately.”
HOMEF queried how Nigerians are told that oil revenue is not enough to service the nation’s external debt yet at the same time, the NNPC is declaring profits.
The organisation insisted that It must only be in Nigeria that a public company of doubtful efficiency would metamorphose into a private company and hopes to have a dramatic difference using the same staff and possibly same tools that had run a business it described as very opaque.
HOMEF lamented that Oil theft has not only polluted our environment, but it has also polluted the country’s national politics, impoverished the people, polluted the consciences of Nigerians to the extent that thieves are celebrated as heroes while the poor in their struggle to fish in polluted waters or to farm in polluted soils, are labeled villains.
The statement added ” The narrative has been that the stealing is done by operators of illegal refineries. However, those refineries could not refine 400,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Clearly this is fiction. Those illegal refineries have thrived and become critical suppliers of refined petroleum products in the country today as the four government owned refineries remain either comatose or on life support. In fact, we need to be told how the NNPC managed to pay for 20 percent shares in the Dangote refinery.
” We have heard sordid tales and seen utterly despoiled environments, but the official declaration that a 4 kilometres pipeline was built in the ocean and illegally operated for 9 years without being detected deserves the NNLG literature prize.
“Who can explain how a pipeline of that length and quality could be installed without being detected? And how could it have been operated for nine whopping years without being detected? Not the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and its NNPC and the then DPR; not NOSDRA nor the transnational oil companies; not the Navy nor the Joint Military Task Force detected it? Certainly, half the story has not been told.”
HOMEF said with the consistent revealing of oil theft, the time is ripe to hold the Niger Delta Manifesto for Ecological Transformation before the eyes of office seekers or holders.
The organisation explained that Nigeria’s recovery from the disturbing happenings in the oil sector will be assured through a conscious focus on righting the wrongs visited on the people, society, and environment.