FOURTEEN persons were arrested by men of the Nigerian Navy for their alleged involvement in illegal oil bunkering in Elem Krakama community of the Degema Local Government Area of Rivers State.
Also, the Navy uncovered an illegal oil refining site with a capacity to produce over 9.6 million litres per day of Automotive Gas Oil, popularly called diesel.
In an operation led by the Commander, Nigerian Navy Ship, Pathfinder, Commodore Desmond Igbo, on Thursday, the Navy said three wooden boats with a storage capacity of 70 metric tonnes were seized
Igbo, while conducting newsmen round the location in the creeks, said the suspects were siphoning crude from a tapped oil wellhead from Oil Mining Lease (OML-18) operated by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited in the area.
He said the wellhead was compromised by the suspected oil thieves in the same oil field.
The naval chief noted that the site has 16 cooking pots with the capacity to contain 6,000 litres of diesel each, while maintaining that the Navy will not relent in ensuring that illegal oil refining activities become a thing of the past.
He stated, “This is Elem Krakama in Degema LGA of Rivers State. We have come here to ensure that this oil stealing will not continue.
“We have about 16 cooking pots and some of them contain about 600,000 litres. It is very huge, as you can see where they are tapping it from, right from the oil wellhead.
“It comes out the way water comes from the tap. We have made arrests; we arrested about 14 of them in the act of stealing the crude and also illegally refining this crude.
“Behind me is oil wellhead 15 belonging to OML-18 of NNPCL. You can see a very big 14-inch hose connected illegally to this oilwell head 15.
“They are transferring it to this big wooden boat also known as the Cotonou boat. The boats contain 70 metric tonnes of crude oil, the crude is still there, they will connect it to the reservoirs through the four-inch hose and from there they will start cooking it.”
Continuing, the NHS Pathfinder boss said, “We have four of these wooden boats in this camp. The cooking pots also contain about 1.5 million litres of AGO. This is not good for our country, not good for the economy.”
Igbo noted that the success was in furtherance of the mandate by the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla, to fish out economic saboteurs in ensuring oil theft in the Niger Delta becomes history.
Commodore Igbo said both the arrested suspects and seized crude would be handed over to the appropriate agencies for prosecution.
