The Nigerian National Pipeline Company (NNPC) Limited, on August 13, 2022, launched an app to monitor and help curb oil theft and pipeline vandalism.

The Crude Monitoring Application allows communities and other Nigerians to report oil theft incidences. The NNPC Limited launched the application on Friday, August 12, during the signing of the Product Sharing Contract (PSC) between the oil agency and its Oil mining Lease partners.

The portal’s link address, “stopcrudetheft.com” is also available for mobile phone users. The portal has several application options for reporting incidences and crude sales document authentication.

According to Malam Mere Kyari, NNPC Limited’s Group CEO, vandals’ actions on pipelines had become challenging to deal with. Still, several partners were involved to ensure that the situation was under control.

The Group CEO said government regulatory bodies, host communities, and security agencies were involved in formulating a robust framework to deal with the menace.

“There are still ongoing activities of oil thieves and vandals on our pipelines and assets, very visible in the form of illegal refineries that are continuously put up in some locations and insertions into our pipeline network,” said the Group CEO.

Punishing Lawbreakers

Kyari says the Nigerian Army has arrested people and vessels in the last three months, praising the Armed forces for doing substantive work and destroying some illegal refineries.

The CEO urged international refineries which could benefit from the stolen crude oil to only buy Nigerian crude oil from validated sources, failure for which they would be held responsible and alongside the culprits who are involved.

He insisted that every product leaving the country must have a unique registration number provided by NNPC and validated by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC).

The GCEO said it was the refineries’ responsibility to validate the products since every crude that leaves the country has a unique number. He added that the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) was on the lookout for massive cash movement and was following up on people related to those transactions.