By Benjamin Obaigbena
Public Forum
It is a surprise that Nigeria has just woken up from its heavy inertia to know that the country is losing a substantial volume of crude oil to oil theft and bunkering. These activities are as old as the oil industry. Nigeria cannot shy away from the truth or claim ignorance of the astronomical volume of oil theft for the past 50 years. It deliberately let loose the baby tiger into the wild to mature to a monstrous size and sophistication to evade being caught or detected in the act for several years.
There is common sense that anywhere in the world where criminals are never caught or brought to justice for a long time, government agents are directly involved or a cartel with powerful links to high-profile politicians in government protecting the common interests of both parties is involved. The world is very familiar with this phenomenon as we always see in mafia movie plots. You may go to church every day and twice on Sundays, it does not change the way of this world because this world is not a holy place but a hotbed for intimidation, victimization and terrorism garnished with condiments of betrayal, greed and corruption.
The unprecedented economic consequences of the immense oil theft has left most serious-thinking businessmen and high-value politicians to ponder in their silent moments, saying: “What have we done to get to this state of putrescence?”
It is not that nothing was done in the past. Actually, in year 2000, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) initiated a very innovative and successful strategy to combat corruption at the Pipeline Products Marketing Company (PPMC) depots nationwide, reduced pipeline vandalism and smuggling of petroleum products to neighbouring countries.
Let me rewind. A few years back, NNPC was fighting this battle alone, especially the theft through pipeline vandalism for crude and finished products along system E and 2E NNPC pipelines. The depot pumping station may hardly know the conditions along the pipelines but a receiving depot would notice a drop in pumping pressure (signalling a suspected line break). At that stage, it was impossible to physically inspect hundreds of kilometres of pipelines to detect the exact spot. They had to patiently wait for a report from the affected community. Early detection of pipeline disruption was not possible at that time and may still be so today. In the past, it took four to seven days to locate a vandalised spot through the efforts of Good Samaritans who took it upon themselves to travel long distances to the nearest pipeline depot to report a case of pipeline rupture from either failed integrity of highly corroded pipes or from vandalism. On receiving such reports, NNPC would mobilise Mobile Police with selected engineers to the location for the repair of the damaged line.
In the early 2000s, NNPC mobilised the military and MOPOL to assist to curb the menace but it was later discovered they were part of the problems too. It was a nightmare for NNPC.
There was a proposal to involve the local communities to constantly monitor the safety of the pipelines passing through their communities in return for monthly payout for work well done. In that scenario, you could not rely too much on human beings, where there was exchange of money as a reward. The highest bidder became the master of the business and ensured immediate change of loyalty.
In 1994, a think tank of NNPC then, the Consultancy Services Unit (CSU) based in Lagos, proposed the use of technology to monitor the distribution of crude and product lines using the principles of telemetry/SCADA, where NNPC could monitor real-time distribution activities of the pipelines along the country’s arteries of pipeline network. Any vandalism or pipeline break along the distribution lines would be instantly detected with telltale blinking lights or audible alarm displaying the coordinates of the location on the screen. An SOS signal would be immediately sent to the nearest military base (Air Force, Navy or Army or combined teams) for immediate dispatch of anti-terror personnel to sweep the area and contain the menace.
Response time would be such that the vandals would not have enough time to inflict maximum damage. The idea was muted at the presentation venue and did not get to top management of NNPC at that time because of the associated high cost to deploy such technology. That costly decision to mute the idea did not consider the long-term cost-benefit implications. If that technology was deployed at that material time, the country would have saved more than $20 billion or more to date. Apart from the long-term cost saving, the technological experience in managing the pipeline surveillance and security over the years would have been extended to our railway and road networks for the same purpose.
This 1995 technology has advanced to modern and faster technology with many add-ons (for example, use of HD video cameras to capture footage needed in identifying and persecuting the criminal bunch in court, SMS, long-distance drones, cloud storage, satellites, etcetera).
It is still not too late, if we prioritise the need to deploy this technology. The money to acquire this technology can be generated, if we significantly reduce the huge wastage from the three tiers of government, which are too numerous to mention here. The government can re-engineer its processes to save cost and improve efficiency in delivery of goals.
A few years back, the Gulf of Guinea Energy Security Strategic Initiative (GGESS) was interested in the curbing of oil theft in Nigeria. The United Kingdom government (Foreign and Commonwealth Office, FCO) offered technical assistance to address the problem of illegally obtained (stolen) crude oil in the Niger Delta. The FCO engaged and funded University of Plymouth (UoP) to develop techniques capable of solving the problem. The Federal Government of Nigeria directed NNPC to join in the initiative. NNPC commissioned its roburst Research & Development division, based in Port Harcourt, to work with UoP on identification of Nigerian crude anywhere in the world, which would discourage theft of Nigerian crude.
Fingerprinting technology was one of the methods considered to address this menace. Crude oil fingerprinting (like crude oil signature) is an analytical technique to identify key biomarkers in crude or its products or we can call it hydrocarbon forensic geochemistry. The basic principle of the technique is that crude oil from different reservoirs have unique fingerprints and information could be used for oil spill identification, source identification of crude, identification of formations that are actively producing, and solve production allocation problems.
At the end of the day, the fingerprint of most Nigerian crude was almost completed and further works were necessary to identify Nigerian crude from a mixture (comingling) with other foreign crudes.
The challenge was the immediate acquisition of more sophisticated analytical equipment to complete the investigation. NNPC’s R&D division made a presentation on this study (as promising tool to stop stealing Nigerian crude for easy detection anywhere in the world) to the office of Minister of Petroleum in 2013. A promise was made by the office to release $350,000 for immediate purchase of high resolution time of flight (TOF) mass spectrometres (GC-GC-TOF-MS) and gas chromatography combustion isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC-C-IRMS).
The purchase of the equipment did not see the light of day and that was the constraint to conclude the high-end research to establish a base to identify Nigerian stolen crude anywhere on this planet.
It is good to let Nigerians know that the NNPC R&D division was at the time (and maybe till now) the most equipped laboratory in Africa with developed capabilities to carry out many complex oil and gas studies that were being done overseas, saving several millions of dollars.
By 2013, they had developed capabilities to study and advice government on oil pollution, atmospheric pollution, specialised core analyses, complete crude oil assay, advanced geochemistry, catalysis studies for the refineries, gas utilisation studies, enhanced oil recovery, etcetera.
If the government means business to stop oil heft, it should invite NNPC’s R&D division, Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, multinational and national oil companies to meet and come up with solutions to put a final stop to the old problem that has wrecked the nation below its productive organs of survival.
Oil theft can be decimated through combined use of advanced warning and detection technology, policy and judiciary. The local vigilance group can be a useful catalyst in this drive for intelligence, surveillance and information-gathering. It is long overdue to overhaul the security of our national assets or we are gradually preparing a groundbreaking recipe for self-implosion.
For public knowledge, NNPC R&D outfit was set up at the same time with NNPC via the Federal Government’s April 1977 Act No. 33. Most times, when a war or a battle is won, nobody hears about those intellectuals and intelligence community that worked 24/7 behind the scenes to support and enhance the outcome of victory. It is now time for government to wake up, make an early morning call to challenge and push the intellectual community of our great nation to start solving national problems through aggressive research and innovation. No nation on this planet thrives in this highly competitive age without a solid foundation in pure and applied research.
•Mr. Obaigbena is a retired group general manager of the NNPC’s Research and Development Division