Former Public Relations Officer, PRO of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, Fortune Obi says the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPC, is to answer for the discovery of an illegal oil pipeline connection operated off Forcados.
He tells Dayo Elusakin on Nigeria Info’s Hard Facts that this is because the NNPC is solely responsible for giving licenses to companies that carry out oil activities.
The NNPC Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, had earlier disclosed that it uncovered an illegal oil connection from its Forcados Terminal that operated for nine years.
Responding to a question about what seemed a thriving crude oil theft business in Nigeria, despite the government awarding pipeline surveillance contracts to certain individuals, Obi said illegal oil activities can only persist when a government fails to deplore the right techniques to fight oil theft.
“Maybe they’ve been using a cosmetic approach,” he said, stating that the government should engage host communities and ensure saboteurs are prosecuted.
Also, on allegations of security agents conniving to facilitate crude oil theft in the country, the former PENGASSAN PRO said the government should be held responsible for not probing such allegations to punish those found culpable in order to deter other security personnel from such acts.
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