Each time an incident occurs, blame is placed on poor roads, corruption and other factors, and an investigation is promised. (STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images)
One night in late April, Paul Shetto was returning home to his family when a tanker carrying 33,000 litres of gasoline collided with a truck and exploded along the East-West Road in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
From where the factory worker was standing, it appeared as if everything in the path of the flames was instantly reduced to ashes, and the 51-year-old man was unable to hold back tears as he watched.
The explosion killed five people, destroyed more than 120 vehicles, and burned everything within a 500-meter radius.
Shett was far enough away that he escaped unharmed.
The April fire was not Shet's first fuel tanker fire – in May 2022, a petrol tanker explosion on the same road also killed his brother Maxwell and several others.
“My brother's wife and children are so traumatized they are still unable to accept the reality of my brother's death,” Schette said.
The two incidents are part of a long list of recent deaths, injuries and destruction on Nigeria's roads.
Last August, the Foundation for Investigative Journalism revealed that more than 200 petrol tanker fires have occurred across Nigeria since 2018, killing more than 800 people.
On May 4, exactly one week after the incident witnessed by Chet in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, another petrol tanker fire broke out along the Warri-Sapele road in Delta State, leaving seven people dead.
Nineteen days later, another explosion occurred along the Mowe-Ibafo axis of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
Each time an incident occurs, blame is placed, factors such as poor roads and corruption are listed and investigations are promised. Little is said about why tankers are on the roads in a country with vast oil pipelines.
The answer is relentless vandalism of the pipeline.
Nigeria has a 5,001km network of oil pipelines stretching from 22 oil depots and four refineries across the country. The old refineries, apart from Aliko Dangote's new one in Lagos, are defunct and the associated pipelines are not in use. But fear of vandalism would keep anyone from considering reusing them to transport imported petroleum products.
According to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, between 2017 and 2021, there were 7,143 documented incidents of pipeline vandalism resulting in the theft of approximately 209 million barrels of crude oil.
Losses from these incidents amounted to $12.74 billion.
The government's own estimate is even more staggering: a loss of $20 billion a year.
to oil thieves breaching pipelines with inadequate security measures;
The state oil company said there had been more than 9,000 pipeline incursions this year alone. “When you eliminate one illegal connection, another one pops up,” its chief executive Mele Kyari told the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
He said the company had shut down 6,409 illegal refineries and disconnected 4,846 illegal pipes connected to pipelines in the Niger Delta alone, but estimated that oil was still being siphoned from about 700 other illegal connections.
A $50 million oil pipeline monitoring contract with Government Ekpempolo (commonly known as Tompolo), a company owned by a former militant leader, has not ended the vandalism.
Also contributing to the situation is the fact that while the crime carries a prison sentence of 21 years to life if caught, only a small fraction of the more than 5,000 oil thieves arrested since 2020 have been prosecuted.
Given the risks of pipeline transport, oil distributors are shipping gasoline by truck as a safe bet. Safe, until it's not.
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