Lagos – The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPC, has disclosed that the Forcados oil export terminal, being operated by the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, SPDC, had an illegal connection line into the sea that had been operating undetected for nine years.
NNPC’s chief executive officer, Mele Kyari, revealed this to a National Assembly committee, according to Reuters.
He said the 4-kilometre (2.5-mile) connection from the Forcados export terminal, which typically exports around 250,000 barrels per day, bpd, of oil, into the sea was found during a clamp-down on theft in the past six weeks,
“Oil theft in the country has been going on for over 22 years but the dimension and rate it assumed in recent times is unprecedented,” Kyari said in an audio recording cited by Reuters.
Thieves often tap land-based pipelines to siphon oil undetected while they continue to operate, but an illegal line in the ocean is highly unusual and suggests a more sophisticated theft operation.
Nigeria, typically Africa’s largest oil exporter, is losing potential revenue from some 600,000 bpd of oil, Kyari said, as some is stolen and as oil companies idle certain fields rather than feed pipelines tapped by thieves.
Nigeria’s crude oil exports fell below 1 million barrels per day in August for the first time since at least 1990 as a result, starving Nigeria of crucial cash.
Also in August, NNPC awarded contracts to companies, including that owned by a former leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta, Government Ekpemupolo, popularly known as Tompolo, to crack down on oil theft.
Loadings at the Forcados terminal have been stopped since a leak was found from a sub-sea hose at the terminal on July 17. Shell said this week that it expected loadings to resume in the second half of October.
Forcados operator SPDC, a local subsidiary of Shell, said the theft pipeline was distant. “SPDC appreciates the additional surveillance conducted on behalf of NNPC to deal with illegal activities,” a spokesperson told Reuters by email.
“However, the recently discovered theft pipeline is approximately 30km away from SPDC’s Forcados terminal. It is not within SPDC’s pipeline right of way.”
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