Oil thieves attack unsecured pipeline sites across the country.

Nigeria disrupts black market oil trade

LAGOS, September 25, 2015 – The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps reported it had destroyed eight illegal refineries and seized 42 oil tankers used in smuggling black market oil to the international market.

“On Friday we destroyed three illegal refineries in Rivers state; within the week we destroyed five in Bayelsa and another two in Abia,” The Commandant General of the Corps, Alhaji Abdulahi Gana, told journalists at his home in Minna, Niger State. The operations were carried out between July and September.

In a country where oil generates 70 percent of government revenue and makes up 90 percent of export earnings, the theft of 10,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd)– around 0.5 percent of domestic daily production of about 2 million bopd – hits the budget hard. Some estimates put daily oil theft as high as 200,000 bopd.

Recently-elected President Muhammadu Buhari has promised to fight theft in the industry. The government estimates that its pipelines have been attacked more than 4,000 times in the last year alone, and that 350 people have been killed by oil thieves.

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