TheCable

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited has appealed to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to help in tackling the menace of crude oil theft in the country.

Mele Kyari, group chief executive officer (GCEO) of NNPC, spoke at an interactive session with Ola Olukoyede, EFCC’s chairman, held in Abuja on Monday.

Kyari said crude oil theft is the most humongous and virulent economic crime in Nigeria that must attract the attention of the EFCC.

This, He said, is based on the volume of oil stolen daily and the brazenness with which the perpetrators operate.

“As we continue to do our best to deepen transparency and stamp out corruption from the system, there is one big challenge that you will need to help us with, Mr. Chairman,” Olufemi Soneye, NNPC’s spokesperson, quoted Kyari as saying.

“That challenge is crude theft. It fits into everything you have said — the people, the asset, the opportunity, and the absence of deterrence.”

According to Kyari, the national oil company has deactivated 6,409 illegal refineries in the Niger Delta region, disconnecting up to 4,846 illegal pipes connected to its pipelines — out of a total of 5,543 illegal connection points.

“That means there are a vast number of such connections that we have not removed,” he said.

“These things don’t just happen from the blues. They happen in communities and locations we all know. As we remove one illegal connection, another one comes up. It is sad, Mr. Chairman.

“This kind of thing does not happen anywhere else in the world. When we say illegal connections, they are not invisible things, they are big pipes that require some level of expertise to be installed.

“Some of them are of the same size as the trunk line itself. No one would produce crude oil knowing fully well that it is not going to get to the terminal. That is why nobody is putting money into the business. So, you can’t grow production.

“I believe, personally, that the very purpose of your commission is to curtail economic crimes, and there is no bigger economic crime of this scale anywhere else than what is happening in this area.”

On corruption within the system, Kyari said by law, the NNPC is required to uphold high ethical standards and has implemented structures and measures to curb discretionary actions which fuel corruption.

He said most processes in the company have been fully automated to discourage arbitrary actions.

The NNPC boss added that many issues of corruption reported to the public were either not true or recycled from the past.

In his presentation, Olukoyede expressed satisfaction with NNPC’s commitment to issues of ethics and code of conduct.

He, however, challenged the oil firm’s management to ensure that codes of ethics and standards are supplemented with monitoring and enforcement to improve deterrence.