Nigeria is ramping up its battle against oil theft in the Niger Delta, aiming to boost national production to 3 million barrels per day and address energy insecurity.
Oil exports make up 80 percent of Nigeria’s revenue, with current production at 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd), placing the country among the world's largest oil producers.
The Niger Delta, where most of the country’s oil is extracted, has long been a hotspot for illegal refineries and theft, costing Nigeria millions each month.
Chief of defence staff General Christopher Musa said security forces have been relying on technology, in land and air operations, to monitor and protect the region.
“We have drones and helicopters that fly [over], [and] patrols that go on water,” Musa said.
The government has also been tackling illegal operations that, in 2022, cost an estimated $23 million per day, according to Nigeria's Senate. Losses continued into 2023, with $1.43 billion reported in the first quarter alone.
The country suffers frequent blackouts due to load shedding – the interruption of the electricity supply to avoid excessive load on its electricity plants.
"We have the challenge of energy security in Nigeria... We must increase electricity generation and distribution throughout the country," President Bola Tinubu said in June 2024.
"As a nation, it is so shameful that we are still generating 4.5 gigawatts of electricity."
Institutional criminality
“The issue of theft would have been far more successfully tackled decades ago, had so many people not been profiting from it," said Jon Marks, editorial director of energy consultancy and news service African Energy.
He told RFI that criminality has become embedded in Nigeria's regional and national politics, as well as its business world.
“Oil theft has become institutionalised, with gangs tapping into pipes and often exporting via small ships that offload to bigger ships. This has been achieved by local gangs becoming very powerful, but even more so by the connivance of local politicians and the military – who, in turn, have become very rich."
He believes that nothing much has changed since a 2013 report by think tank Chatham House, carried out under Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency, which concluded that no concerted action against illegal oil operations could be expected soon.
Change within the military
“The big potential change under Tinubu – who desperately needs more formal revenue for an ailing economy – comes with changes within the army. He has appointed new top brass, more in tune with his thinking and factional alliances," added Marks.
In June 2023, following a meeting with Tinubu, Asari Dokubo, Ijaw leader of the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, declared that: "The military is at the centre of oil theft in Nigeria."
Prominent Nigerian businessman Tony Elumelu, chairman of Heirs Holdings and a member of the Presidential Economic Coordination Council, has also chimed in, saying that the government should be able to tell Nigerians who is stealing the country’s crude oil. “Our security agencies should tell us who is stealing our oil. You bring vessels into our territorial waters, and we don’t know?"
Foreign interference
According to Marks, the authorities may be “looking the other way” because they are in on the deal. He also claims that the Russians too have become involved in the oil theft business.
“By providing more ships, the Russian shadow fleet and other players – who use unregistered carriers – transport illegally obtained crude oil offshore where bigger ships wait to pick it up,” he said.
Any action taken by Tinubu and the military chiefs he has recently appointed may be limited, Marks argued, by their concern not to upset existing power balances within Nigeria, where powerful factions would suffer from any disturbance to the oil theft business, and other sectors where reform is vital.
