The Nigerian Navy has destroyed an illegal oil bunkering vessel arrested with stolen crude oil in the creeks of the Niger Delta.
It was gathered that operatives of a newly-contracted private oil pipeline surveillance team, Tantita Security Services, arrested the vessel alongside its seven-member crew on 6 October.
They were arrested on the creeks of Escravos, while crude oil was being loaded illegally into a waiting ship, according to a report by Punch newspaper.
About 600 to 650 cubic metres of illegally lifted crude oil in five compartments were said to be on board the vessel with registration number L85 B9.50 as of the time of the arrest.
The Navy personnel set the bunkering vessel ablaze on Warri River, Delta State, at about 3 p.m. on Monday after the ship’s captain, Temple Manasseh, confessed that the vessel was laden with crude oil.
“I was arrested in Escravos by Tompolo boys but the alleged stolen crude oil was not loaded by me. My vessel was hijacked by some boys who forced the loaded crude into my ship,” Mr Manasseh said in his confessional statement.
“I don’t know the hijackers at all. But when Tompolo security operatives stormed the scene, they all ran away and abandoned their loading operation which had lasted about two and a half hours,” Mr Manasseh added.
The Navy officials who destroyed the oil vessel did not speak to journalists after the incident.
But the Marine Intelligence Consultant for Tantita Security Services, Warredi Enisuoh, said the arrest was a result of intelligence gathering, explaining that the operatives “monitored the space via satellite”.
Mr Enisuoh stated that records showed that the Dutch vessel sold to a Nigerian had been variously “used for moving crude oil illegally for years,” adding that the arrested vessel had scheduled to take the stolen crude to Tema in Ghana.
Oil theft, illegal refineries in the region, and their negative impact on the country’s economy have been a source of concern to the Nigerian government over the years.
The federal government in August awarded a pipeline surveillance contract reportedly worth N48 billion per year (N4 billion per month) to Government Ekpemupolo, who is popularly known as Tompolo, to check massive oil theft in the region.
Mele Kyari, the chief executive officer of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, would later explain that the government was not dealing directly with Mr Ekpemupolo but Tantita Security Services, a private contractor company in which he has an interest.
PREMIUM TIMES reported that Mr Ekpemupolo discovered at least 58 illegal points in Delta and Bayelsa States where crude oil is being stolen, barely two months after he was awarded the multi-billion naira oil security contract in the region.
PREMIUM TIMES
