Special court for oil thieves?

• Published date: 10 January 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

Last Thursday's disclosure by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva and the Group Chief Executive Officer Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) Mele Kyari, that the Federation Government has agreed to set up a special court to expedite the trial of oil thieves and pipeline vandals in the Niger Delta, is the country's latest move to check the menace of oil theft.

It follows repeated calls by Kyari since last April 7, when he appeared before the House of Representatives' Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream) on the same subject matter.

Showing the committee photos and videos of how the country's crude oil assets are being vandalised and the products stolen, he urged the legislature to establish a special court that would handle cases relating to oil and gas to accelerate prosecution of oil thieves.

'I am not sure that we are short of legislation; it is life imprisonment for attack on these facilities. So, there are laws to support this. All we need to do is to increase the advocacy so that the legal process takes its course, prosecutions are done timely.

'I will recommend that we set up a special court for this. Such cases will be speedily dealt with, so that it is not just the ordinary 'small' people that you see at those locations that are prosecuted.'

In his view, large scale crude oil left and export requires considerable resources and it is an elitist crime.

'We know that to sell crude oil in the international market, it is not the business of the ordinary people that you see in these illegal refineries. It is an elitist business and we must have the courage to set up very independent special courts to try cases related to this.

'Otherwise, the impact it has on our economic outlook - our ability to generate foreign exchange and in terms of energy security for this country - is threatened by a very few people. Clearly, they are a few people. It is not beyond us.' Kyari said.

Billions lost to oil theft

According to the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, the country lost 619.7 million barrels of crude oil valued at $46.16 billion or N16.25 trillion in 12 years from (2009 to 2020).

NEITI, in a statement on December 14, 2022, backed the decision of the Federal Government to set up Special Investigative Panel on Oil Theft and Losses.

The NNPCL in a statement last September 12, said it loses 470,000 bpd of crude oil amounting to $700 million monthly due to oil theft.

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