The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Bashir Ojulari, has revealed that crude oil theft across Africa is driven by specialised international and continental gangs exploiting security lapses.
Ojulari made this known on Monday at the opening of the Africa Chief of Defence Staff Conference in Abuja.
According to him, oil theft is not a localised crime but a sophisticated operation requiring cross-border collaboration to tackle effectively.
He stated, “Crude theft and its attendant illegal activities are by no means a purely localised occurrence; rather, these operations involve specialised international syndicates that take advantage of gaps within the state, national and continental security architecture to conduct illegal activities.”
He declared that crude theft and pipeline vandalism, especially within the oil-rich Niger Delta area of Nigeria, have become old occurrences because of the efforts of security agencies.
He declared, “Security forms a key pillar of the energy business and therefore plays a very important and strategic role in achieving national, regional and continental energy security goals.”
Ojulari said as the head of the largest national oil company on the continent, “We have seen the benefit of the collaboration within the energy space, with significant improvement in our operating environment”.
