By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Oct 23 1999 (IPS)

Nigeria’s military has urged the government of President Obasanjo Olusegun to deploy troops in the oil-rich Niger Delta to protect the country’s oil installations from saboteurs.

The call to deploy the troops follows a recent breakdown of the Kaduna Refinery, which, oil workers allege, was an act of sabotage.

At a recent two-day seminar on “Threats to Nigeria’s Oil Industry”, held at the National War College in the capital Abuja, representatives of the army, the navy and the air force, alleged that “both internal and external forces were threatening Nigeria’s oil industry”.

The seminar, organised to examine the problems facing Nigeria’s oil industry, urged the government to enter into dialogue with the aggrieved and restive youths in the Niger Delta.

Last week, the Kaduna Refinery and Petrochemical Company (KRPC) was shut down following a breakdown of the firm’s Fuel Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU), a major nerve centre responsible for the cooling of the plant.

FCCU has a capacity to produce 2.5 million litres of petrol daily. Before it was closed down, the plant was producing between 300,000 and 400,000 litres of petrol per day.

Officials of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN) have met the management of the Kaduna Refinery to seek a permanent solution to the incessant breakdown of the plant.

Nigeria has four refineries with a total capacity of 470,000 barrels per day (b/d). The new Port Harcourt Refinery has an installed capacity of 150,000 b/d; the Old Port Harcourt Refinery 60,000 b/d; Warri Refinery 110,000 b/d and the Kaduna refinery 150,000 b/d.

However, during the military regime of the late head of state, General Sani Abacha, who ruled Nigeria between 1993 and 1998, all the refineries were either shutdown or operating below capacity due to non-servicing of the plants, leading to massive importation of petroleum products.

Long queues became a normal occurrence in filling stations with officials, in cohort with fuel attendants, ripping government and motorists off millions of dollars. At that time, a can of 25 litre petrol fetched between 20 and 30 US dollars instead of the official five dollars.

Since the execution of Nigeria’s leading rights activist, Ken Saro-wiwa, along with eight other minority Ogoni leaders, agitation for the control of the oil wealth by the inhabitants of the Niger Delta had heightened.

Many youth and militant groups have since sprung up disrupting oil exploration activities, attacking multi-national oil companies and seizing foreigners working at the oil installations.

Some ethnic groups – the Ijaws, the Itshekiris and the Ilajes – have also been on each others throats over ownership of lands in the region. As a result, hundreds of lives have been lost in skirmishes between the three ethnic groups.

In mid-September, the multi-billion-dollar Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NNLG) project in Bonny, Niger Delta, came under siege by youths demanding compensation from the managers of the project.

Only the intervention of President Obasanjo, who visited the troubled region during the crisis, saved the situation but not without the disruption of the shipment of gas to Europe, scheduled to start on Oct 1.

Business activities were also paralysed at Port Harcourt Refinery on Monday, when youths from Eleme and Okrika clashed over ownership of the oil area, leading to the death of one person.

In his paper, Air Commodore J.O. Okeiye, Chief of Air Operations, says because of the peculiar terrain of the Niger Delta the military should be involved in guarding the oil installations in the region.

He says the involvement of the armed forces, in collaboration with the police, in guarding the area, will reduce the pressure on the police deployed in the troubled region.

Okeiye also urged the multi-national oil companies operating in the Niger Delta to embark on projects that will raise the standards of living of the local people.

The armed forces also called on the government to involve the militants in the region in the proposed security arrangement to guard oil installations.

“There is something the Niger Delta youths know about the operations of the oil companies in their area that the government does not know. They should be taken into confidence and included in the security system. This will enable government to find out what it did not know,” they argued, in a joint statement.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Oct 18 1999 (IPS)

Nigeria’s military has urged the government of President Obasanjo Olusegun to deploy troops in the oil-rich Niger Delta to protect the country’s oil installations from saboteurs.

The call to deploy the troops follows a recent breakdown of the Kaduna Refinery, which, oil workers allege, was an act of sabotage.

At a recent two-day seminar on “Threats to Nigeria’s Oil Industry”, held at the National War College in the capital Abuja, representatives of the army, the navy and the air force, alleged that “both internal and external forces were threatening Nigeria’s oil industry”.

The seminar, organised to examine the problems facing Nigeria’s oil industry, urged the government to enter into dialogue with the aggrieved and restive youths in the Niger Delta.

Last week, the Kaduna Refinery and Petrochemical Company (KRPC) was shut down following a breakdown of the firm’s Fuel Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU), a major nerve centre responsible for the cooling of the plant.

FCCU has a capacity to produce 2.5 million litres of petrol daily. Before it was closed down, the plant was producing between 300,000 and 400,000 litres of petrol per day.

Officials of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN) have met the management of the Kaduna Refinery to seek a permanent solution to the incessant breakdown of the plant.

Nigeria has four refineries with a total capacity of 470,000 barrels per day (b/d). The new Port Harcourt Refinery has an installed capacity of 150,000 b/d; the Old Port Harcourt Refinery 60,000 b/d; Warri Refinery 110,000 b/d and the Kaduna refinery 150,000 b/d.

However, during the military regime of the late head of state, General Sani Abacha, who ruled Nigeria between 1993 and 1998, all the refineries were either shutdown or operating below capacity due to non-servicing of the plants, leading to massive importation of petroleum products.

Long queues became a normal occurrence in filling stations with officials, in cohort with fuel attendants, ripping government and motorists off millions of dollars. At that time, a can of 25 litre petrol fetched between 20 and 30 US dollars instead of the official five dollars.

Since the execution of Nigeria’s leading rights activist, Ken Saro-wiwa, along with eight other minority Ogoni leaders, agitation for the control of the oil wealth by the inhabitants of the Niger Delta had heightened.

Many youth and militant groups have since sprung up disrupting oil exploration activities, attacking multi-national oil companies and seizing foreigners working at the oil installations.

Some ethnic groups – the Ijaws, the Itshekiris and the Ilajes – have also been on each others throats over ownership of lands in the region. As a result, hundreds of lives have been lost in skirmishes between the three ethnic groups.

In mid-September, the multi-billion-dollar Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NNLG) project in Bonny, Niger Delta, came under siege by youths demanding compensation from the managers of the project.

Only the intervention of President Obasanjo, who visited the troubled region during the crisis, saved the situation but not without the disruption of the shipment of gas to Europe, scheduled to start on Oct 1.

Business activities were also paralysed at Port Harcourt Refinery on Monday, when youths from Eleme and Okrika clashed over ownership of the oil area, leading to the death of one person.

In his paper, Air Commodore J.O. Okeiye, Chief of Air Operations, says because of the peculiar terrain of the Niger Delta the military should be involved in guarding the oil installations in the region.

He says the involvement of the armed forces, in collaboration with the police, in guarding the area, will reduce the pressure on the police deployed in the troubled region.

Okeiye also urged the multi-national oil companies operating in the Niger Delta to embark on projects that will raise the standards of living of the local people.

The armed forces also called on the government to involve the militants in the region in the proposed security arrangement to guard oil installations.

“There is something the Niger Delta youths know about the operations of the oil companies in their area that the government does not know. They should be taken into confidence and included in the security system. This will enable government to find out what it did not know,” they argued, in a joint statement.

Excerpt: