How to Steal an Oil Tanker

An article by Reinhold    No Comments

Nigeria – Africa’s most populous country – is well known for being a political enigma. Every year when the state failure warnings come out, Nigeria is always coloured a bright red. ‘Why doesn’t Nigeria collapse?’ has become a compelling question for political scientists. The lifeblood that keeps the Nigerian government running is oil revenue. However over the past decade Nigeria’s major oil producing states in the Niger Delta have been gnawed at by one of the most interesting insurgencies I’ve ever come across.

A brief description of the Niger Delta conflict is that armed rebels of the marginalised Ijaw ethnic group are demanding control over oil revenues extracted from their region. Militants began attacking multi-national oil companies operating in the region in the late 1990’s and Nigerian military units were sent to protect the oil industry. The conflict has caused over 4000 casualties so far. All that we in New Zealand ever hear about the conflict is when a Western oil worker is kidnapped and held for ransom – such as two New Zealanders who were taken in July 2007.

Kidnapping and ransoming hostages is good business for the militants, but it pales in comparison to the income rebels can get from stealing oil – a practice known as bunkering. The trade is huge – theft on an industrial scale. Most estimates say that up to 10 per cent (over 200,000 barrels per day) of Nigeria’s oil production is stolen. A civil servant in the Niger Delta makes US$136 per month, while a young rebel involved in bunkering can make US$7,500 per month.¹ The trade in stolen oil is now worth more than the entire Colombian drug trade.²

Bunkering is possible in the Niger Delta because of its geography; a vast network of pipelines cutting across swamps and islands makes stealing oil relatively easy. It is very hard for companies to monitor this network, and for the military to patrol it. Shell alone has over 8000 km of flow lines linking over 1000 oil wells to 90 flow stations.³ Massive amounts of oil are vulnerable and accessible to those who know how to exploit it.

Oil bunkering is not a job for amateurs. Although Nigerian pipelines are not top quality, they cannot be easily opened. Bunkering requires expertise, which is acquired by the rebels through former or current employees of oil companies.⁴ Bunkerers tap into oil pipelines, and pay oil workers to maintain the pressure on the line. Manifolds and well-heads are popular bunkering spots, or any area where a pipeline emerges from the swamp. In the most straightforward operation, crude is piped into river barges and transported to ships offshore for export.⁵

The hardest part of bunkering involves transporting the barges to tankers waiting offshore, however this problem has largely been overcome through collusion between the rebels and the Nigerian military.⁶ While it is a confusing phenomenon, collusion between rebels and government soldiers is not unknown – in Sierra Leone civilians referred to their civil war as a ‘sell-game’, in that it was similar to a fixed football match.⁷

Many foreign reporters have been stunned by the sight of a team of bunkerers operating while Nigerian soldiers observe.⁸ In 2005, two rear-admirals were dismissed for their role in the disappearance of an oil tanker. ⁹ This business relationship between bunkering rebels and the military is reflected in battle: there was one claim by an analyst in Dokubo Asari’s NDPVF camp that military commanders phoned Asari telling him when they were going to attack.¹⁰

Bunkering is such a huge business it could be argued that it must operate with the complicity of several institutions and sections of Nigerian society, as well as international actors.¹¹ Large bunkering operations are rumoured to be controlled by local bosses, who are in turn controlled by political patrons.¹² Nigerian newspapers argue that the bunkerers are untouchable due to these connections. High profile figures from throughout Nigeria are continually rumoured to be involved in bunkering, including military officers, traditional rulers, officials of top oil companies, and financiers of political parties.¹³ An investigation in 2005 revealed that at least three leading Nigerian banks, with links to banks in Switzerland, had financed the trade in bunkered oil.¹⁴

The Niger Delta insurgency serves as a great example to reform how we think about conflict. The Western public is trained (by history and media) to think of warfare in binary terms; where two military forces fight until one capitulates. This leads to problems when Western militaries get involved in conflicts like Afghanistan – where the enemy changes, and there is no ‘victory’ in the traditional sense. A better way to conceptualise conflict is proposed by David Kilcullen, who thinks in terms of ‘conflict ecosystems’ (see figure below) with multiple competing entities seeking to maximise their survivability and influence. ¹⁵

The problem with a conflict ecosystem is that it becomes self-sufficient, and very difficult to end. The Nigerian Government cannot give in to rebel demands, as without the oil revenue Nigeria would collapse. However, trying to defeat the rebels militarily means losing the consent of the local population, making the area harder to control. Through oil bunkering, the rebels have a vested interest in the conflict continuing, as many people in the Nigerian Government who are part of the bunkering networks have also. In this kind of conflict, many argue that it is more beneficial to try and ‘manage the war’ rather than end it.