The Chairman House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum Resources, Downstream Hon. Ikenga Ugochinyere, has said the news of involvement of subcontractors in Bayelsa oil theft, pipeline vandalism is a threat to crude oil availability for local refineries and export revenue.
The lawmaker’s reaction came on the heels of report that an oil surveillance operation smashed a huge illegal bunkering camp in Bayelsa, Niger Delta, with certain entities including one of the pipelines security subcontractors to an indigenous oil exploration company, fingered in the incident.
Ugochinyere in a statement on Saturday lamented that the availability of crude oil in Nigeria has been a blessing as well as a curse, as it generates both revenue and criminality.
According to him, though the petroleum sector has been the backbone of Nigeria’s economy, it has doubled as an avenue for the primitive accumulation of wealth as well as a platform for crimes such as vandalism.
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He stressed that the Nigeria’s oil industry has a problem of petroleum pipeline vandalism which often leads to destruction of oil and gas pipelines.
Ugochinyere said that this alarming incidents of petroleum pipeline vandalism in Nigeria have spiralled over the years and it’s saddening that subcontractors are now fingered as part of the problem.
Noting that pipeline vandalism if not nipped to the bud will become a threat to crude oil availability for local refineries and export revenue, the Lawmaker called for the cancellation of the subcontractor works, immediate arrest and prosecution of the culprits to serve as deterrent to others.
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