Mkpoikana Udoma
Port Harcourt — The Federal Government says oil theft has become a national emergency, especially as the nation had not been able to meet its OPEC production quota.
To this end, the federal government is seeking the support of state governments in the Niger Delta region on measures to be adopted to check oil-theft.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, said this when he led a Federal Government delegation on anti-Oil theft to Asaba.
Sylva lamented that, “as a country we cannot sustain this kind of theft perpetually’.
“Our production has dropped drastically to very unsustainable levels.
“So, we have decided to take the bull by the horn by putting some structures in place and those structures cannot function effectively without the collaboration of the state government.”
Also speaking, Delta State Governor, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, demanded for a review of surveillance contracts on oil facilities to involve host communities in order to check the high rate of oil theft in the country.
Okowa explained that it was often difficult to secure the facilities, especially when the persons given the contracts did not have adequate information on the environment or not have the buy-in of host communities.
“Why involvement of the communities is needed is because there are some parts of the creeks that cannot be accessed by the surveillance contractor. Therefore, surveillance contracts should not be such that communities are not involved.
“The surveillance contracts should be tied to performance such that when there are oil thefts you terminate the contract and it is always good that communities are involved because they know the environment better,” he said.
The governor also berated oil companies for not keeping faith with their Memorandum of Understanding, thereby making the stakeholders to lose confidence in the system.
He explained that when oil companies failed to sign or implement MOUs, “it becomes very difficult for the state government to mediate when there are issues.”
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