By Hauwa Ali
The director general of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Bashir Jamoh, has disclosed that plans are underway to deploy round-the-clock surveillance to watch for oil theft, adding that operation would include manned and unmanned aircraft, helicopters, ships and armored vehicles, all connected to a headquarters known as the C4i Center.
Jamoh said this at a weekly ministerial meeting held in Abuja, Thursday.
According to him, selected officers from the agency were undergoing three weeks of training in Italy to enable them operate the aircraft.
He said the drones “can move up to 100 kilometers and can remain 10 hours in one place, taking data and sending it to our own operations centers for possible intervention.”
This is coming as officials from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) recently announced the discovery of the pipeline being used to steal oil.
Jamoh said the pipeline was uncovered during a raid weeks ago but Authorities have not said who built it, and no arrests have been made.
Mele Kyari, group managing director of the NNPC ltd. said Nigeria was losing an alarming 600,000 barrels of oil every day, triple the figure initially estimated.
Experts said the discovery of the underwater pipeline showed formerly unknown levels of sophistication among oil thieves.
Nigeria is facing a record reduction in oil production, dropping from the first largest producer in Africa to the fourth, behind Angola, Algeria and Libya, according to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries monthly oil market report for August.
It showed that Nigeria’s production stood at 980,000 barrels a day, a decline of more than 100,000 barrels per day compared to the previous month.
For decades, Nigeria has been Africa’s largest oil producer. But in recent years, theft and sabotage at production sites have hampered output. Petroleum authorities say more than 200,000 barrels are lost daily as a result, and that the trend is costing the country millions of dollars in revenue.