The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited on Tuesday said it has uncovered an illegal oil connection from Forcados Terminal that operated for nine years.
NNPCL Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, disclosed this on Tuesday at the Senate’s joint committees on Gas and Petroleum (Upstream and Downstream), where he also apologised for skipping the last briefing on health grounds.
“Oil theft in the country has been going on for over 22 years but the dimension and rate it assumed in recent times is unprecedented,” Kyari said.
According to him, a four-kilometer illegal oil connection line from Forcados Terminal into the sea which had been in operation for nine years was detected during a clampdown in the past six weeks.
It is not clear how the line operated unnoticed for years. The Forcados terminal is operated by Shell. A spokesperson for the company could not be reached as the known phone line did not connect.
