The involvement of private security firms helps to discover illegal oil points, the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mele Kyari, has said.

Kyari spoke on Tuesday at the 2022 Energy And Labour Summit of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) in Abuja.

According to him, many of the crude oil theft of late could not have been delivered except with the connections of professionals.

“We don’t mince words about it that the involvement of private security companies in this journey has helped us. Many of the discoveries we make today could not have been done without local knowledge, access to the people, supporting the local people who are used by some of the criminals to perpetrate some of these things for very little things that they give them. Now, they are involved and supporting us in the recovery of these assets and we are very proud of their intervention,” Kyari said on Tuesday.

Kyari said the NNPC Limited won’t spare anybody in its resolve to recover the nation’s oil assets, adding that many of the crude oil theft discoveries in the past weeks cannot be said in the public.

“Whoever, anywhere whether in the NNPC, security agencies or wherever you are, whoever you are working for, as long as we know such people, please report such people because they are the enemies of all of us,” he noted.
“Everyone is on the table today because if we don’t arrest this, we won’t have a company. It will completely question any possibility of energy security for the country.

“Until we arrest the current problem of theft, it is very difficult to take the next step. And I am happy to share with you today that monumental progress has been achieved. And I can tell you in the next couple of days, maximum a week, more of our pipelines will come back on stream. This will no doubt provide the resources that will be required to go back to work, reinvest and also provide resources for our country,” Kyari stated.

In August, Kyari justified the government’s decision to award a multi-billion naira pipelines surveillance contract to Tantita Security Services led led by former militant leader Government Ekpemepulo aka Tompolo.

Tompolo’s firm recently made startling revelations on crude oil theft in the Niger Delta area. He said about 58 illegal oil points have been discovered so far since the operation to end oil theft on the waterways of Delta and Bayelsa states began.

However, human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, and some other Nigerians described the contract to Tompolo as a “colossal embarrassment” to security agencies in the country, adding that it is a loss of confidence on all the service chiefs who should have resigned.