The Nigerian Senate on Wednesday produced a report that found $303 billion in oil revenue from the past ten years is missing, much of it attributed to oil thieves who tap into pipelines and sell their stolen crude on the black market.
The report was compiled by the Senate Ad-Hoc Committee on Crude Oil Theft, headed by Sen. Ned Nwoko, who criticized the government for doing very little to analyze or prevent theft on a massive scale.
Nwoko advised the Nigerian federal government to “set up a special court to promptly prosecute crude oil thieves properly and their collaborators,” to establish a development trust fund to reduce sabotage, and to give the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulator Commission (NUPRC) control over all abandoned and decommissioned oil wells.
The report from the ad hoc committee proposed investments in advanced surveillance technology, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), to track down oil thieves. It also suggested that investing in better oil and shipping infrastructure would make it more difficult for oil bandits to operate.
Nwoko further asked for his committee to be “given the mandate to track, trace, and recover all proceeds of stolen crude oil both locally and internationally.” Some senators pushed back against this demand, arguing that “recovery is beyond the powers of the Senate” and should be the responsibility of the federal government.
Several other senators were astonished that such huge sums of money could simply disappear without a trace and that the federal government had no formal mechanism for tracing or recovering the missing revenue. One senator noted that the missing money was enough to cover “almost ten years of Nigeria’s budget.”
The Senate report pointed out that not only does Nigeria lack the necessary financial auditing and recovery resources, but it does not even have a reliable way to measure how much oil its wells are pumping, and how much of that oil is actually reaching legal buyers.
The committee recommended implementing and enforcing international measurement standards at all production and export sites, installing the equipment needed to take precise measurements, and empowering the federal trade ministry to take aggressive action when oil is missing.
While much of the Senate applauded the efforts of Nwoko’s committee, some said the report did not go far enough, particularly when it came to naming the “actors” involved in stealing oil and hiding the proceeds of black market sales.
“The title of the report includes ‘the actors,’ so we must know who they are. It is a complex web involving companies, individuals, and illegal refineries. We need well-by-well and rig-by-rig data,” said Sen. Ibrahim Dankwambo.
Nigeria has a long-standing problem with oil theft as miles of poorly-constructed and indifferently-monitored pipelines stretch across the country, giving bandits plenty of opportunities to establish their own illegal refineries.
In early 2023, the Nigerian military conducted a high-profile anti-piracy operation that destroyed 39 illegal wells in two weeks. The operation was prompted by state oil company NNPC’s discovery of a pirate pipeline that was over two and a half miles long, plugged into an undersea export terminal.
NNPC estimated at the time that thieves were stealing up to a third of Nigeria’s oil revenue. The government was so desperate to crack down on theft that it hired a former militant and oil thief known as Government Ekpemupolo to help the military track down other bandits.
Ekpemupolo, widely known by his nickname “Tompolo,” has since become one of the most influential figures in Nigeria by selling himself as a peace broker with militant factions. He campaigned hard for President Bola Tinubu in the last election.
Tompolo celebrated his 54th birthday at an “undisclosed location” last month. A video of the event showed one of his party guests dumping a bucket of money over him, a practice known as “showering” that is technically illegal in Nigeria.
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As the new Senate committee report suggests, whatever efforts Tompolo has made toward eliminating oil banditry have not been terribly effective.
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