UK and Nigeria join forces on oil theft
By William Wallis in London and Matthew Green in Lagos
Published: July 16 2008 03:00 | Last updated: July 16 2008 03:00
Britain and Nigeria will seek ways to tackle one of the fastest growing criminal rackets in the world, the industrial-scale theft of Nigerian crude oil, when Gordon Brown, prime minister, hosts Umaru Yar'Adua, the Nigerian president, in London today.
Mr Brown has offered help in cracking down on an insurrection in the oilproducing Niger Delta region, where theft and sabotage have reduced Nigerian output by a quarter and contributed to soaring world energy prices.
"These are criminal acts . . . What we're looking at is how we can help ensure there is law and order in what is a very dangerous area," Mr Brown said.
His offer has received a mixed response in Nigeria. One official said that while support from Britain in patrolling international waters could be helpful, any suggestion of military assistance inside Nigeria would be counter-productive.
Figures in the government and military who are involved in the oil theft could undermine any foreign-backed strategy by painting it as a threat to Nigerian sovereignty.
Some Nigerian officials and politicians believe Britain could be of most help if it threw its diplomatic weight behind efforts to curtail the international trade in stolen Nigerian oil.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Patrick Dele Cole, a former adviser to Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president, said on a bad day more than 500,000 barrels of oil were stolen. An international cartel had emerged, he said, trading the crude in parts of Africa, east Europe and Asia.
"In exchange for the oil, there are now arms coming in, and in exchange for these arms insurrection is being fuelled. And so you have a vicious cycle," Mr Cole said.
A heavyweight politician from the Niger Delta, he has gone public with a plan to end the crisis, which has caught the attention of policymakers. He proposes a tracking system to halt the trade in stolen oil and the use of recovered proceeds to fund security and development in the delta.
Without a parallel development strategy in the area, he said, no amount of troops would ease the crisis. Nigeria's armed forces were compromised by officials profiting from the trade in stolen oil, he said, and it might be necessary to hire private security assistance.
Mr Yar'Adua echoed some of the Cole proposals at the G8 summit last week, when he called for a tracking system for oil similar to the Kimberley process set up to curb the trade in diamonds from African war zones.
Mr Yar'Adua is planning a Niger Delta conference bringing together militants, community leaders and government officials in search of a solution to the crisis.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
