Business
How Shell Stole Over $140Million Worth of Crude, Buhari Wants Immediate Recovery, Prosecution
By Pointblank, February 17, 2021
Feb 17, 2021 - 11:52:11 AM

Dutch oil Giant, Royal Dutch Shell, allegedly stole over 2,081,678 barrels of Bonny Light Crude worth over $140million between 2016 to 2018 and emasculated indigenous oil firms in Nigeria, documents seen by Pointblanknews.com have revealed.

This is even as President Mohammadu Buhari is said to have directed officials of the Department of Petroleum Resources, a Department under the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, to ensure that every stolen crude by Shell is investigated and recovered all stolen crude.

Irked by the amount of oil stolen from the Niger Delta, the House of Representatives Adhoc Committee on Oil Theft, recently, took the DPR upon the 329,420,319 barrels of crude oil alleged to be missing, wondering why the DPR could not account for the crude valued at over $20 billion
between 2005 and 2012.

Sources familiar with the theft of the crude by Shell told Pointblanknews.com that the Dutch Oil Giant had stolen the crude from the Trans Niger Pipeline.

Pointblanknews.com investigations revealed that officials of DPR had become suspicious with the way and manner Shell was reporting the
quantity of crude lifted and immediately ordered investigations into the metering system on the Trans Niger Pipeline, TNP.

According to sources, a former Managing Director of Shell had denied any wrongdoing and even threatened claiming that the Dutch Oil giant did no wrong.

Despite Shells denials, sources told Pointblanknews.com that DPR officials were bent on getting to the root of the matter as the continued investigations.

Pointblanknews.com gathered that once DPR officials were through with the investigations, they unearthed how Shell stole 2,081,678 barrels ofBonny light crude between 2016 and 2018.

Sources hinted that when Shell was confronted, they could not deny the theft but pledged to return the stolen crude and pay penalties.Nigeria has lost more than 505 million barrels of crude, and 4.2 billion litres of products, from 2009 to 2018, according to NEITI.

The cost to the country comes to $40.06bn and $1.84bn respectively, equivalent to $11.47mn per day for 10 years.

Only recently, Britain’s Supreme Court said that a group of about 50,000 Nigerian farmers and fishermen could bring a case in London’s High Court against Royal Dutch Shell over years of oil spills in the Niger Delta that have polluted their land, wells, and waterways.

The judges said there was the potential that a parent company like Shell, which has its headquarters in the Netherlands but a large British presence, has responsibility for the activities of subsidiaries like the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, which operates in the delta region