The army said that they had found 49 boilers that were being used to refine stolen crude oil.
Major General Jamal Abdussalam, the Nigerian Army’s General Officer Commanding of the 6th Division, led reporters on a tour of the heavily forested reservoirs.
Major General Abdusalam stated that the Division’s personnel found 14 reservoirs within the forest that had more than 200,000 liters of crude oil thanks to reliable intelligence.
According to him, the owners of the illicit reservoirs possessed around 49 crude oil boilers, which were used to refine petroleum and distribute it via a variety of routes.
He disclosed that the suspects built a number of tanks and connected crude oil from nearby abandoned well heads using wires and pipes.
He said, “The idea of bringing you here is to let Nigerians know exactly what is happening. You can see that this place is in a deep forest. Even if you are using a helicopter and military drones, you will not be able to see what we actually saw here on the ground. We discovered this based on credible intelligence which led us to this location.
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“We have discovered so many illegal activities. As you can see, we have seen reservoirs that can contain upward of 200,000 litres of crude oil. We have discovered about 14 of them in this bush. We have also discovered boilers capable of processing crude oil; about 49 of them, all located inside this bush and we have seen the network of hose and cables connected around the whole area.
“The crude oil we have discovered in this place is in the excess of the daily crude oil export of Nigeria. This is very pathetic and very sad to note. Here we discovered 14 reservoirs and each reservoirs stored minimum of 200,000 litres of crude oil. So simple mathmatics will give you in excess of 3 million litres of crude oil that is stored. We are not talking of the ones that have been processed and taken out. These are the ones that we have discovered.”
The commanding officer said some arrests had been made, noting that those arrested “are not the major players in this business they are just carriers of the stolen oil.”
“This discovery is part of our efforts to ensure that government get what is due to it. The budget has been…passed into law and the executive have also accented to it. That budget were planned based on some parameters. One of the parameters is the crude oil production we chun out every day. So any drop in that crude oil production affects everybody in this country. Our people are not aware of that and that is why they are involved in this type of business.”
He issued a warning to people engaged in the illicit crude oil trade to turn from their criminal activity and choose lawful ventures that will bring them lawful profits.
