Shell accused of shortchanging Nigeria on crude oil account

A coalition of youth groups across the country and a consortium of lawyers have accused the oil giant, Shell, of allegedly stealing over 16 million barrels of crude oil belonging to an indigenous oil company, AITEO Group.

They accused Shell of sabotaging the efforts of President Muhammadu Buhari to raise oil revenue.

Speaking to newsmen on Thursday in Abuja, the coalition alleged that the oil giant was planning to launch a smear campaign against the Nigerian company and the owner n order to divert attention over its role in the alleged theft.

The youth groups are the Arewa Consultative Youth Movement, Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo Youth Movement, Oduduwa Youth Assembly, Niger Delta Youth Council, Middle Belt Youth Vanguard, and Africa Youth Council. The representative of the African Centre for Human Rights and Justice was also at the briefing.

At the joint press conference, the spokesperson of the consortium, Tochukwu Ohazuruike, a lawyer, and the President of the ACYM, Kabiru Yusuf, said the activities of the foreign company were running indigenous firms out of business.

“The concerned groups are of the view that the unapproved metering system Shell deployed was such that it gave inaccurate figures of the actual the volume of crude pumped from the NCTL to the Terminal.

“Some Indigenous Oil companies in Nigeria that export crude oil from the Bonny Oil Terminal which is operated by Shell complained to the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) about the level of unaccounted crude pumped to the terminal through the Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL).

“DPR is the government agency that directly regulates the Nigerian Oil and Gas sector conducted an investigation and discovered that through the unapproved metering system Shell had deployed, it had stolen over 2 million barrels of oil which the agency asked Shell to refund to the companies that own the oil.

“However, AITEO on its own hired private expert investigators and auditors who discovered that Shell had stolen over 16 million barrels of crude oil from AITEO alone with more emerging discoveries of millions of barrels missing crude.”

“The unapproved metering system Shell deployed was such that it gave inaccurately figures of the actual volume of crude pumped from the NCTL to the Terminal. This erroneously made the Federal Government blame it on crude oil theft by third parties and made the Government waste scarce resources in the pursuit of oil thieves.

“Yet Shell knew that there were no thieves but that it was responsible for the manipulation. Not only Nigeria did not earn its due entitlements, government expended resources chasing nonexistent oil thieves due to manipulation by Shell.

“Since these allegations broke, Shell had been doing its best to divert attention, obfuscate facts, deflect all efforts at getting to the truth and sponsor the international media smear campaign against AITEO and its management.

“Shell has set out to do this entire dark offensive through syndicating false news publications in reputable media outfits to put AITEO in a bad light and divert attention from the real issues of Shell involvement in the stolen 16m crude oil barrels. It is important at this juncture to place all media houses both local and International on notice to exercise all forms of caution.”

The coalition urged media houses not to buy into the plots by Shell to bring witness statements already dismissed by courts to destroy the image of the Nigerian firm.

“A company that has been indicted for crude oil theft by Nigeria oil industry regulator and other judicial and quasi-judicial bodies cannot be supported to continue to harass, intimidate and destroy the businesses and hard-earned reputations of victims of their criminal actions. This is not fair and it will rub off on the credibility of any media houses that agrees to do the dirty job.”