CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
- BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Oil exploration started in Nigeria in 1908 at Araromi in Ondo State. The first explorer company called ―The Nigeria Bitumen Cooperation‖ was the first company licensed to explore oil. During this time drilling was not successful by as the oil exploration was halted on the outbreak of First World War in 1914. In 1937, Thirty one (31) years after licence was granted to Darchy and Anglo-Dutch Consortium, now Shell Petroleum Development Company (SDPC) for oil exploration. However, like their predecessor they were terminated by the outbreak of World War II in 193. Activities commences after the World war in 1946, which led to a successful drilling for exploration of oil on August 3rd, 1956 in Olobiri. The first shipment took place in February 1958 when production was about 5,000 barrel per day (Judith, 2009).
Since the discovery of oil in commercial quantity in Olobiri area in 1958, Nigeria became an oil producing and exporting country, thereby becoming the six largest producer of crude oil in the world. However, the blessing of the discoveries seemed to have turned out to be a plague on Nigerians generally. The people of the Niger Delta region has suffered tremendously thereby knowing no peace from environmental degradation, economic poverty, starvation, inter community conflict, above all is illegal oil bunkering which has become synonymous with the region.
The act of stealing oil is known as ―bunkering,‖ a term originally used to describe the process of filling a tanker with oil. Illegal oil bunkering thrives in a climate of instability,
conflict, and political chaos. Nigeria offers the perfect operating environment. Nigeria, a large, densely populated, and highly heterogeneous country of approximately 160 million people, it is a complex mixture of people and religions, all of whom have competing claims on an inefficient and corrupt government. There are approximately 250 ethnic groups and the population is divided evenly between Christians and Muslims. The period since the restoration of democracy in 1999 has been characterized by unusually high levels of political violence centered on the Niger Delta, the heart of Nigeria‘s oil industry. The Niger Delta consists of six or nine oil producing states in southern Nigeria, depending on one‘s geopolitical definition. The core Niger Delta states are, from east to west, Rivers, Bayelsa, and Delta.
Oil bunkering is an operation involving the fuelling of ships of all kinds on the high seas, inland waterways and within the ports. What comes to mind whenever oil bunkering is mentioned in Nigeria are thoughts of illegal oil bunkering, oil theft and pipeline vandalising. Indeed, the line between crude oil theft and oil bunkering has become very blurred in the country due to a misunderstanding of what oil bunkering operations entail. This, according to experts, is largely connected to the proliferation of crude oil theft that is already denying the country huge revenues in trillions of dollars (Oketola, 2014).