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Oil Smugglers Accused of Fueling Warri Crisis

Vanguard (Lagos)
NEWS
August 21, 2003
Posted to the web August 22, 2003

By Kenneth Ehigiator
Warri
AS residents of Warri picked through the charred remains of their devastated
waterfront market yesterday, international oil smugglers were accused of
fuelling the ethnic crisis in the Niger Delta region. Five days of fighting
between ethnic militias and security forces have left large areas of this oil
city in ruins, with dozens of homes and businesses destroyed and hundreds left
homeless.
"I feel so bad about it," said 36-year-old beautician Dora Okoro, who gulped
back tears as she showed the remains of her hair-braiding salon in the McIver
district, the frontline of the fighting, where she had worked for 10 years. A
short distance away in the muddy channel in front of Warri's naval base, two
rusting oil tankers were lying at anchor.
Two weeks ago, navy patrols caught them trying to smuggle thousands of tonnes
of stolen crude out of the delta, officials said. Their international crew are
under arrest and the Nigerian authorities are investigating a smuggling network
they say has provided the armed gangs of the delta with both modern military
weapons and a very good reason to fight.
The oil under the Niger Delta - which is the mainstay of the Nigerian economy
as a whole - has proved a curse for those trying to bring peace and development
to the warring communities around Warri. There is simply too much money at
stake.
On and off for the past three decades, and most recently since March, heavily
armed ethnic militias have been battling each other in the swamps west of the
city. On Friday the violence spread to the city itself. But even though the
fighting has forced Shell, ChevronTexaco and Total to shut down most of their
oil wells in the western Delta itself, oil is still pouring out of the disputed
region and on to the international market.
"Oil theft is accounting for around 70,000 to 100,000 barrels per day in the
western region," Frank Efeduma, Shell's External Relations Manager in the
Western Niger Delta, told reporters yesterday. In the Niger Delta as a whole,
theft accounts for up to 150,000 barrels per day, he added, with most of it
ending up smuggled to unscrupulous refineries outside Nigeria by international
syndicates.
Armed gangs mounted on barges prowl the Niger Delta swamp to find an exposed
section of pipeline. Using a technique known as hot-tapping, they pierce trunk
pipelines bringing oil from beyond the swamps to the firms' export terminals,
and fit valves of their own, diverting tonnes of crude into their boat.
With oil worth more than two million dollars per day disappearing, "bunkering"
as it is known in Nigeria is big business. Expatriate European oil executives
privately admit that they know foreigners trading in bunkered oil. In Lagos,
the flow of dirty money is fuelling the lifestyles of the rich and famous, but
in Delta State the profits have enabled communities of fishermen and small-time
smugglers to arm themselves for war.
An uneasy calm had returned to the streets of Warri yesterday, after the latest
round of bloodletting, but the stinking carcass of McIver market was littered
with spent cartridges from modern assault rifles.
"The type of weapons available in this region is the result of criminal
activities, and they are provided to protect these illegal activities," said
Delta State Governor James Ibori.
"Those profiting from this conflict are those involved in illegal business," he
said. Officials say that with the security services struggling to quell ethnic
violence, there is no-one to curb the smuggling.
The federal government, has in recent weeks intensified efforts to cut off the
flow of stolen oil.
Following pressure from Abuja, Ivory Coast's state-run oil refinery, which
Nigeria suspects of buying bunkered crude, signed a deal on Tuesday to import
30,000 barrels per day legally.
But oil executives say that the problem extends much further afield, to
European ports such as Rotterdam for example. And until there are no more
profits to be made in running armed gangs in the Delta, mediators say that
moves to solve the political and cultural differences between the Ijaw and the
Itsekiri will be an uphill struggle.

   

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