From Uche Usim, Abuja
As the Federal Government searches for solutions to the protracted crude oil theft and the attendant energy crisis, President, Women In Energy Network (WIEN), Mrs Funmi Ogbue, has listed greater involvement of women stakeholders and stronger partnership with investors as a panacea to the lingering logjam.
In an interview with Daily Sun, Mrs Ogbue, while condemning the deep-seated rot amid seeming government’s complacency in arresting the menace, said the time to tackle the disaster was now or never.
According to her, WIEN parades tested and trusted private sector players with sufficient capacity to partner other relevant stakeholders to decimate the monsters responsible crippling the energy sector and by extension the country’s life raft.
“Crude oil theft and other crisis rocking the petroleum sector require a multi-stakeholder approach. At WIEN, we have the capacity and capability to help tackle this. Technology deployment is key here. Again, we need to get the intelligence agencies on board too. Militarising the oil producing communities has not yielded the desired result meaning the equation is not balanced. This is a national scourge we are talking about. It affects the heart of the country. The associated economic risks of oil theft, pipeline vandalism and other matters are better imagined.
“We need to protect the investors. We need to let them do what they have to do. UK has opened bid rounds. That should jumpstart us into seriousness. It means the money is to be retained in the UK.
This is a country without pipeline vandalism and other infrastructure challenges we have here. Where will investors go to? Nigeria or UK? Your guess is as good as mine. We need to address the challenges stunting the growth of the petroleum sector. We can’t afford to play politics with it. The frequent national grid collapse can be traced to these disruptions as power plants are starved of gas. This should not be. This is the only country we have. We have to make it work”, she said.
Meanwhile, sensing dangers ahead amid louder calls for energy transition, International Oil Companies (IOCs), who built the infrastructure in which oil is mined, are quickening their exit; leaving the country vulnerable to a crippling energy crisis.
Investigations by Daily Sun reveal that private sector players with expertise on how to manage the imbroglio are not part of the solution crew the government has constituted to arrest the situation.
According to industry watchers, the solution to oil theft does not lie in excessively militarising the Niger Delta region, but by a tripartite agreement between the private sector players, government bodies (Ministry of Petroleum Resources and agencies) and the security and intelligence circle.
Sources note that the private sector and operators, if sincerely carried along, are expected to provide the technical know-how by deploying HiTech surveillance equipment, especially as oil is no longer stolen at the well-heads because vandals have become innovative, bypassing the anti-ballistic pipelines to disrupt production.