The Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mallam Mele Kyari, has said that involvement of private security firms has helped in discovery of illegal oil points.
He spoke on Tuesday at the 2022 Energy And Labour Summit of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) in Abuja.
According to Kyari, many of the crude oil theft lately could not have been discovered but with the connections of professionals.
“We don’t mince words about it that the involvement of private security companies in this journey has helped us. Many of the discoveries we make today could not have been done without local knowledge, access to the people, supporting the local people who are used by some of the criminals to perpetrate some of these things for very little things that they give them. Now, they are involved and supporting us in the recovery of these assets and we are very proud of their intervention,” Kyari insisted.
The NNPCL boss vowed that the company would not spare anybody in its resolve to recover stolen Nigeria’s oil assets, adding that many of the crude oil theft discoveries in the past weeks cannot be said in the public.
“Whoever, anywhere whether in the NNPC, security agencies or wherever you are, whoever you are working for, as long as we know such people, please report such people because they are the enemies of all of us,” he asserted.
He added: “Everyone is on the table today because if we don’t arrest this, we won’t have a company. It will completely question any possibility of energy security for the country.
“Until we arrest the current problem of theft, it is very difficult to take the next step. And I am happy to share with you today that monumental progress has been achieved. And I can tell you in the next couple of days, maximum a week, more of our pipelines will come back on stream. This will no doubt provide the resources that will be required to go back to work, reinvest and also provide resources for our country.”
The award a multi-billion naira pipelines surveillance contract to Tantita Security Services owned by a former militant leader Government Ekpemepulo aka Tompolo has elicited criticisms from various quota, with a human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, and some other Nigerians describing it as a “ colossal embarrassment” to security agencies in Nigeria and a loss of confidence on all the service chiefs who should have resigned.
But Kyari recently justified the decision of the government to award the contract to Tompolo’s firm.
Tompolo’s firm recently raised the alarm that about 58 illegal oil theft points have been discovered so far since the operation to end oil theft on the waterways of Delta and Bayelsa states began.