Friday, February 13, 2009 8:09:00 PM
This was interesting news from Wednesday:
Military seizes 22 barges of stolen oil
News wires
The Nigerian military impounded 22 barges of stolen crude oil in the creeks of the Niger Delta in what it said was its biggest seizure for months.
A naval patrol close to Chanomi Creek in Delta state stumbled across the barges late last ngiht while on routine surveillance, Brigadier General Wuyep Rimtip, commander of the joint military taskforce in the western Niger Delta, told Reuters.
"All were filled to capacity. I believe they were waiting for a vessel to come and evacuate the product, but their luck ran out," he said this morning.
When oil prices were at their peak around $147 a barrel last year, criminal networks in the Niger Delta were earning millions of dollars a day from an illegal trade in industrial quantities of stolen crude, an activity known locally as "bunkering".
Industry executives estimate the volume of bunkered oil has at times reached hundreds of thousands of barrels per day.
The stolen oil is transferred on barges to tankers waiting offshore before being mixed in with legitimate cargo and sold on the international market.
Armed gangs and militant factions in the Niger Delta, some of whom claim to be fighting for a fairer share of the region's natural resources, use the illicit trade to attract more recruits and fund arms purchases, security sources say.
The main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, called off a 5-month-old ceasefire just over a week ago. On Saturday the group claimed an attack on a Shell gas plant in Delta state.
Rimtip said his soldiers had come under attack on Tuesday evening while guarding the stolen cargo but had repelled the gunmen. He said the last comparable seizure was four to five months ago, when the military seized 17 barges of stolen oil.
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