Date: 2024-05-15 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00002927
Country ... Nigeria
Nigeria leaks billions from rampant oil theft
Oil firms and government say nearly 200,000 barrels of oil
stolen each day from pipelines and wells by criminal gangs.
Nigeria leaks billions from rampant oil theft
Oil firms and government say nearly 200,000 barrels of oil
stolen each day from pipelines and wells by criminal gangs.
In the Niger delta in the early 1990s
Original article: http://www.aljazeera.com/video/africa/2012/08/20128375348592471.html
Original article: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2012/8/3/nigeria-leaks-billions-from-rampant-oil-theft
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY ... Added April 2024
Over a period of several decades I did a lot of consulting work for the World Bank, the UN and others in more than 50 countries around the world. While I was able to learn a lot about the 'problems' that needed to be addressed I also learned that the World Bank, the UN and others were ill-equipped to do much to ameliorate most of the bad situations that were identified.
There are many reasons for this ... not least of which is the disconnect between carreer success and doing valuable consulting! My consulting career for the World Bank went downhill as soon as it became clear that my goal was simply a good project that improved quality of life for the intended beneficiaries. Given the power of bad actors in most parts of the world, my moral clarity was a problem and not a strength. For the World Bank staff and for UN staff, it was important 'not to 'rock the boat''.
Having said this, I did have the good fortune to work with a good number of very competent and committed people at both the World Bank and in various parts of the UN. There were, however, too many people who had figured out how to 'game the system', and the management systems in these major organizations were totally incapable of addressing blatant issues of incompetence, corruption or both!
Before I started doing consulting work with the World Bank, the UN and others, I had had several senior management positions in the corporate private sector. The lack of 'management' in both the World Bank and the UN came as a big surprise ... but goes a long way to explain why the World Bank, the UN and a lot of other major institutions or organizazations cost a lot and don't achieve very much!
This AlJazeera article about Shell and pollution in Nigeria is interesting and very much rings true. In the 1970s I was the CFO of the US company Continental Seafoods Inc (CSF) that built a fishing base and shrimp and fish processing plant near Sapele near Warri. CSF deployed 16 shrimp trawlers to this facility which almost immediately were redirected from shrimp to fish because of the huge demand for fish in Nigeria. Some time after I left CSF, I returned to the area with an IFAD team to assess the impact of oil pollution on the artisanal fisheries of the Niger Delta are in Nigeria. Our findings were that the situation was a lot worse than any of our team had expecteed, and the willingness of the big oil players to be helpful simply did not exist ... with all the big company headquarters in London or Amsterdam or elsewhere carefully insulated from the behaviors of their 'subsidiaries' and local staff!
Peter Burgess
- Nigeria leaks billions from rampant oil theft
- Oil firms and government say nearly 200,000 barrels of oil stolen each day from pipelines and wells by criminal gangs.
Published On 3 Aug 2012
A sophisticated criminal network has stepped up its operations in Nigeria’s Bayelsa State, costing state and oil companies as much as a billion dollars per month.
Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company’s Nigerian subsidiary said in a recent report that between 150,000 and 180,000 barrels of oil are stolen each from its pipelines and wells. Government estimates have put the number of stolen oil as high as twice this amount.
The trade in stolen oil involves international traders who provide oil at discounted prices to refineries in other parts of the world.
Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Adow, reporting from Nigeria's Bayelsa State, said the impact of oil theft on the environment was devastating.
Adow witnessed what he called 'effectively a crime scene' and 'rivers covered by thick films of oil' while on a helicopter tour of the region.
'Vegetation in this once heavily forested region is also devastated by frequent spills and explosions,' Adow said.
Philip Mshelbila of Shell Oil in Nigeria told Al Jazeera, 'cleaning up what has already occured would be futile unless you stop more from happening'.
Meanwhile, the men responsible for the oil theft say they will cease their actions only if the government offers support to the people of the oil-rich region of western Africa.
'It's stealing, we know, but if the federal government can help us then we will leave this [work] entirely,' said Ibegi Alakoroa, an oil thief in Bayelsa State.
Dodging responsibility
On Friday, Amnesty International said investigations into Shell Oil spills were a 'fiasco', alleging the company repeatedly blamed sabotage in an effort to avoid responsibility.
'No matter what evidence is presented to Shell about oil spills, they constantly hide behind the 'sabotage' excuse and dodge their responsibility for massive pollution that is due to their failure to properly maintain their infrastructure,' Audrey Gaughran, director of global issues at Amnesty, said in a statement.
She said 'the investigation process into oil spills in the Niger Delta is a fiasco', referring to the region that is home to Africa's largest crude industry.
The London-based rights group accused the Anglo-Dutch oil giant of ignoring evidence that the latest spill in the Delta's Bodo Creek area, discovered in June, was caused by pipeline corrosion.
Bodo Creek saw two major oil spills in 2008 over which the Anglo-Dutch petroleum giant is being sued in a London court by 11,000 Bodo residents.
An official from Shell's Nigerian subsidiary told the AFP news agency the company was not ready to comment on the latest allegations.
In the statement, Amnesty said it hired the US company Accufacts to examine pictures of the Bodo Creek pipeline over the June spill.
According to Amnesty, the company said it noticed a 'layered loss of metal on the outside of the pipe,' which is 'a very familiar pattern' consistent with corrosion.
'Shell have said locally that the spill looks like sabotage, and they completely ignore the evidence of corrosion,' said Stevyn Obodoekwe of the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development, which co-authored the Amnesty statement.
Source: Al Jazeera And Agencies