Diebu Creek, Nigeria - The sound of fleeing feet rustles
from the undergrowth in this swampy enclave in Nigeria's Delta, where a fire
burns beneath an open tank of crude oil and black smoke fills the sky.
Criminal gangs are quick to run when boats approach the
illegal refineries all over the Niger Delta, a region of creeks and waterways
latticed by hundreds of kilometres of unguarded pipelines pumping valuable oil.
Standing in a foot of oily water, behind a steel tank of hot
crude percolating down pipes, Peter, 38, explains how it's done.
"We carry the crude, put it in these drums and then we
cook it and it runs down these pipes," he said, oil dripping off his
hands, a hood covering his face.
"First we get gasoline, then kerosene and then
diesel," he added, coughing as a wave of smoke gets sucked into his lungs.
He gave only his first name; others asked not to be named at all.
Almost three years since an amnesty was agreed with 26 000
Niger Delta militants, oil theft remains a major headache and is now on the
rise, authorities and oil firms say.
Although the illegal refiners only make up for a small
portion of the theft, the environmental damage they do is huge. Oil spills from
leaky pipes pollute vast tropical waterways.
Shell, the biggest operator, says 150 000 barrels per day is
stolen from Africa's top oil producer. Nigeria's Finance Minister Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala said that as much as one-fifth of government revenue is lost to
oil theft.
The small amount that is refined locally finds a ready
market in a country whose legal refineries are largely defunct.
"We're doing what they can't,"” quips one oil
thief from his barge, a swipe at the Nigerian government's failure to refine
much of the fuel it produces because of decades of corruption.
Grand theft
Most of the theft happens on a larger scale, when
coordinated groups of workers tap into oil infrastructure, siphoning crude into
barges and motorboats before transporting the oil onto larger crafts a few
miles offshore.
The complicity of corrupt security officials and politicians
means this is unlikely to end any time soon, although President Goodluck
Jonathan's administration has pledged to crack down.
Floating down waterways in Jonathan's home state of Bayelsa,
dozens of plumes of smoke are visible from micro-refineries.
The damage is incalculable: broken pipelines are abandoned
and left to haemorrhage into the creeks, while deadly accidental fires
desecrate several square kilometres of wetland vegetation.
A visit to one site shows mangrove shoots tipped black where
they immerse themselves into the water, dying trees sagging over the creeks and
fires raging where illegal refineries are set ablaze by soldiers in periodic
crackdowns.
One barge carrying illegally refined fuel can be seen
dropping off jerry cans to soldiers at a jetty.
"I can assure you we are on top of the situation,"
Onyema Nwachukwu, Joint Task Force (JTF) spokesperson, told Reuters in a
barracks in Bayelsa's capital, Yenagoa. He gave few details.
At the height of the conflict in the Delta, in the late
2000s, militants could move global oil prices with large-scale sabotage attacks
on pipelines and flowstations.
In 2009, the government agreed an amnesty with the
militants, who agreed to give up their arms in return for training programmes
and a 65 000 naira-per-month stipend, about three-and-a-half times Nigeria's
minimum wage.
Although thousands have been trained in everything from
welding to flying planes, there are not always jobs for them, and more than 10
000 have yet to be trained in anything at all.
Many ex-militants complain that they only receive a small
portion of the stipend, while their former commanders pocket most of the
hand-out.
The militants said they were fighting for freedom from the shackles of foreign oil firms and corrupt government. But many were criminal gangs stealing crude, kidnapping oil workers and fighting turf wars with little interest in changing the Delta.
Angry youths
Since the amnesty, violence has subsided and at first oil
theft dipped. But while former militant leaders sit in opulent homes in the
capital Abuja or enjoy lucrative government contracts, their footsoldiers,
bereft of such luxuries, are reverting to old habits. And newcomers are joining
in.
"Small-scale bunkering and illegal refining is becoming
more decentralised and freelance because of turf left open by militants,"
an oil security official in the Delta told Reuters.
Although the government allocated a portion of the budget to
regenerating the Niger Delta after the amnesty, many local politicians have not
delivered the promised jobs, roads, schools and hospitals, and unemployment has
not fallen.
"Don't talk to me about the amnesty. I get 25 000
naira, not the 65 000 they promised.
"It was all a scam," said a large figure sitting
on the edge of a barge, who identified himself by the nickname Killer.
"If they had given me a job I wouldn't be doing
this."
On the far side of the river bank, crude oil worth hundreds
of dollars was being pumped every minute into barges balanced and shifted by
six ex-militants, barking orders at each other, nervously looking around to
check for the JTF.
The destructive methods of the thieves have helped to
further ruin fishing habitats and contaminate water already degraded by decades
of oil production in the area.
Children wash in rivers filmed with shiny oil. There are no
roads to many villages, pushing food and fuel costs three times higher than in
wealthier urban regions.
The United National Environment Programme (UNEP) said it
would take 30 years and an initial $1bn to clean up the dangerous levels of
pollution and environmental degradation in Ogoniland, a small portion of the
Delta.
The report found one community was drinking water
contaminated by deadly levels of benzene, which causes cancer.
Security sources believe without genuine regeneration,
criminals could return to war.
"Yeah, we got amnesty, but nothing changed. This is all
we have to do," one of the oil thieves said.
"If nothing changes we'll be back to the guns," another said. "We'll kill the oil companies, the JTF, all of them."