Two Britons and ten Nigerians have been arrested by the JTF on charges of trying to bribe a military officer to facilitate oil theft, the military said on Friday.
The British High Commission has also confirm that two British men were arrested in Nigeria in connection with an alleged attempt to steal oil.
The Nigeria Government has estimated 200,000 barrels of crude oil, worth more than $20 billion on the international market been stolen daily in the Niger/Delta region. While Analysts also say high-ranking politicians and military officers also benefit from the thefts.
Only this week, President Goodluck Jonathan announced that his government has earmarked $1 billion to fight oil theft.
After the arrest, Major-General E.J. Atewe, commander of the mixed military and police Joint Task Force (JTF) for the oil-producing Niger Delta region, said two of the bunkerers, both Nigerian, had gone to an officer to request clearance to move the crude oil. They had openly admitted their plan was to hack into a pipeline and connect a hose that would siphon crude out of it onto a waiting boat, and offered him $6,500 to provide a gunboat to protect them on the way out.
“The suspects were immediately arrested for attempting to bribe the brigade commander for economic sabotage,” Atewe said in a statement, and a follow-up operation had led to the arrest of two Britons and another eight Nigerians.
Oil theft by armed gangs is rampant in Nigeria, with estimates ranging from 100,000 barrels to 250,000 barrels a day lost to so-called “bunkerers”.
The reports has that the production of the Forcados grade has been hit by underwater pipeline leakage, which Shell blamed on oil theft, and which led the operator to declare force majeure on the grade this week.
However, despite widespread evidence of collusion between Nigerian security forces, the government has been keen to portray oil theft as the work of foreign criminal gangs. Analysts say the main buyers are gangs in the Balkans and refiners in Singapore.
Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer of some 2.2 billion barrels a day.
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