By Braeyi Ekiye
The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, as well as the Pan Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF, and other critical stakeholders in the Nigerian project recently called for the setting up of a Special Investigative Panel on oil theft and losses.
The call was necessitated by the humongous oil theft that has gone unchecked for as long as oil and gas exploration and exploitation began in Nigeria, some 66 years ago. But these thefts at various oil installation locations across the oil producing areas of the Niger Delta became increasingly unbearable in August 2022, the worst month in oil theft record this year, when a foreign vessel capable of lifting over two million barrels of crude oil escaped from Nigerian territorial waters but was arrested by Equatorial Guinean Maritime security forces.
