According to the CEO of the state oil corporation NNPC LTD, authorities in Nigeria discovered an illegal connection line from one of its key oil export ports into the sea that had been operating covertly for 9 years.
According to NNPC Chief Executive Mele Kyari, the 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) connection from the Forcados export terminal into the sea was found during a crackdown on theft in the preceding six weeks. The terminal typically exports about 250,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) into the sea.
In an audio recording of the briefing, Kyari added, “Oil theft in the country has been occurring for more than 22 years, but the dimension and rate it attained in recent times is unprecedented.”
An illegal line in the ocean is exceedingly rare and signals a more covert theft operation than the land-based pipelines that thieves typically tap to siphon oil while they are still at work.
The operator of Forcados SPDC, a local Shell (*9*) subsidiary, didn’t immediately offer a comment.
According to Kyari, Nigeria, typically Africa’s greatest oil exporter, is losing out on the potential income from its 600,000 bpd of oil because some of it is stolen and because oil companies idle some fields rather than feed pipelines that thieves have tapped.
Because of this, crude oil exports declined below 1 million bpd in August for the first time since at least 1990, starving Nigeria of vital funds.
Since a sub-sea hose leak at the terminal was found on July 17, loadings there have been halted. This week, Shell stated that it expected loadings to start up again in the second half of October.
