A new report makes an analysis of the connection between piracy and oil bunkering in the Niger Delta. It notes that although deep offshore piracy has decreased, it has not disappeared.
The report was written by Katja Lindskov Jacobsen, Senior Researcher at Center for Military Studies, University of Copenhagen, and Tarila Marclint Ebiede, Co-Founder and Director of Conflict Research Network West Africa, under the coordination of Thomas Kieler Hansen, EU Delegation Nigeria, and Giulia Nicoloso, CRIMSON Team Leader, makes an analysis of the connection between piracy and oil bunkering in the Niger Delta.
As it informs, after several years during which the Gulf of Guinea had been the world’s number one piracy hotspot with hundreds of seafarers kidnapped annually, since April 2021 there is a significant downtrend in the number of attacks.
With a strong drop in the numbers of kidnap for ransom piracy attacks over spring 2021, a further decrease was registered during the latter half of the year. And most significantly, thus far there are no successful kidnappings of seafarers in the Gulf of Guinea all of 2022. Where attacks happened, the pirates did not succeed in kidnapping crew.
At the same time, industrial-scale oil theft poses an “existential” threat to Nigeria, which slipped behind Angola as Africa’s largest oil exporter in July 2022. Nigeria’s crude oil production decreased to an average of 937,766 barrels per day (bpd) in September 2022, an unprecedented data considering that even amid the Niger Delta agitations output never fell below 1.4 million bpd
the report says.
Piracy status
Although deep offshore piracy has decreased, it has not disappeared. In particular, the report mentions that riverine pirates continue to perform attacks on locals in the region, maintaining intact the foundation behind deep offshore piracy.
In fact, it warns that new aspects of the dynamics and factors that influence the actions of pirate groups have been discovered. More specifically, “spiritualism and rituals are important considering that such practices may influence for example the behaviour of pirate groups at different moments, including the timing of their mission and their response in potential encounters with regional or international navies.”
Besides differentiating different groups, rituals may also have an important internal function: even if gathered on an occasional basis, their “composition” as a group may be “strengthened” by different rituals conducted just before a specific mission, often showcased by similar visual elements as well as less visible symbols, including strings tied to the pirates’ weapons.
What is more, deep offshore pirate groups are not ‘standing entities’, but they are called together for a specific mission, on a “case-by-case” basis.
However, this does not mean that groups are put together randomly as certain skills and figures are always needed: a boat pilot, a group leader, one or two persons who are skilled in how to raise the ladder to board the targeted ship, and someone with knowledge of ships, e.g. to locate the citadel or operate/destroy navigation and other equipment on the boarded vessel
From the field work interviews, the dynamics of “calling for a mission” were also discussed. Namely, the report explains that the decision to go out and conduct attack may sometimes be instigated by a kingpin giving information to a group leader to conduct a mission. Other times it may be the group leader asking a kingpin for finance to off on a mission. As such, there is a both top-down and a bottom-up way of starting a mission.
Oil bunkering
Oil theft can be carried out in various ways, but the most common practice in the Niger Delta involves tapping into and vandalising legal pipelines, which are operated by international and domestic oil companies. The transport of the stolen oil can also happen in various ways, but it mainly involves either barges or a system of illegal pipelines.
According to Ms. Jacobsen and Mr. Ebiede, the illegal oil bunkering business can be broken into two broad categories:
- Theft of crude oil and then shipping it directly to regional and international markets;
- Theft of crude oil and its refining into various petroleum products supplied to local and regional markets.
As such, illegal crude oil and refined products go to the three different levels: local, regional and international.
#1 Local oil bunkering: It mainly focuses on artisanal refining of crude oil. Although there are no clear figures of how much oil Nigeria loses to artisanal refiners daily, the Military Joint Task Force (JTF) indicates that between January 1 to May 2022, the JTF have seized about 27 million litres of automotive gas oil (AGO) from artisanal oil refiners. The JTF admits that due to the limited resources required to set up these refineries, they are often reassembled after destruction by the military.
#2 Regional level oil bunkering: This involves the supply of artisanal refined crude oil products to neighbouring countries such as Ghana, Togo, Benin and Cameroon. The regional level also receives supply of crude oil from the Niger Delta mainly through two sources: from crude oil stolen from transport pipelines and loaded onto transport barges that are able to supply vessels waiting offshore and crude stolen through semi-official means through a process called ‘topping’, an act of adding undeclared crude oil to official shipments.
#3 The international dimension of crude oil bunkering in the Niger Delta: This focuses mainly on crude oil theft and supply to international vessels that operate beyond the Gulf of Guinea. The international dimension of crude oil theft involves militant leaders.
The role of naval presence at sea
The report highlights that international navy presence plays an important role in disrupting offshore piracy. However, such presence is tackling only one symptom of a disease that is very well rooted in the history of the Niger Delta agitations and the (in)security culture in the region.
It is now well established that to tackle offshore piracy it is necessary to take into consideration on-land factors and address the root causes. It is undoubtful that international navy presence play an important role in disrupting the offshore dimensions of piracy
Ms. Jacobsen and Mr. Ebiede stated.
Accordingly, an individual “hard security” approach, such as the deployment of navy vessels at sea, cannot be considered a solution to this multifaceted problem of piracy, the report concluded.
explore more at the report on piracy in the niger delta
