Niger Delta: Shell loses $4.6 million per day to oil thieves

The Tide Online

N’Delta: Shell loses N69.9bn to oil thieves

Nelson Chukwudi • Wednesday, May 21, 2008

The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria has lost a whooping N69.959billion, approximately $595,286,960 to crude oil theft within the last 139 days in the Niger Delta.

This translates to a staggering N518,199,440 or $4,282,640 per day at a crude oil price of $125.96 per barrel.

This means that the largest oil and gas company in Nigeria has consistently been loosing in excess of 33,000 barrels per day to thieves who tamper with its pipelines, manifolds and wellheads in the region.

The Tide investigations show that this contrasts slightly with the estimated 28,000 barrels per day lost to illegal oil bunkering and militancy in the region in 2007.

Giving these revelations recently in Port Harcourt, Mr Chidi Izuwah, pipeline assets manager, Shell Eastern Operations, said the company also lost some 2,000 barrels of condensate to sabotage activities daily over the last four months.

Izuwah, who spoke at the heels of heightened spate of attacks on Shell facilities across the region in recent time, further said the company was fixing 80 points of sabotage on its pipelines. This year alone, about 252 incidents have been recorded on Shell facilities.

The pipeline assets manager regretted that Shell has been compelled to spend $60,000 to repair each point of the damaged pipelines, amounting to about $4.8million, rather than investing same on improving human capacity and social infrastructure in the Niger Delta.

He noted the flashpoints to include, Soku, Ogoni, Utologu, Buguma, Diebu Creek, Adebawa, Greater Port Harcourt Supply Line, among others, stressing that the pipeline emergency response team was now working at breaking point.

Also speaking, Shell’s Regional Manager, Environment, Mr Charles Okoro, regretted that the impact of activities of militants and other illegal crude thieves on the Niger Delta environment would hurt generations yet unborn, saying that this was happening at the mercy of sophisticated criminal gangs with deadly networks.

Okoro stated that the company would continue to respond to every incident within 24 hours to check any crude spills from spreading and damaging the ecosystems and biodiversity.

Earlier, Mr Akin Ogunkoya, assets manager, Shell East, said the Niger Delta crisis could be resolved through other means instead of resorting to sabotaging strategic national economic infrastructure that keeps the nation alive, thereby starving the Federal Government of huge revenues.

Ogunkoya canvassed for intensified security patrols and surveillance of the huge network of pipelines and oil and gas facilities in the difficult Niger Delta, adding that responding to attacks on Shell installations criss-crossing some 1,600 communities in the creeks and hostile environments has been challenging.

The Tide recalls that in the last four months, there has been an unprecedented number of attacks on Shell facilities dotted across the region by militants and illegal bunkering cartels with sophisticated international rings, who have capitalized on the festering Niger Delta crisis to unleash terror on the economic nerve of the nation, and undermine the environmental sustainability of the region and health of its people. 

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