The menace of crude oil theft in Nigeria has taken a new turn as report reveal that a 300,000 dwt Very Large Crude Carrier, VLCC got into a dispute with Nigerian authorities last week and was ultimately chased down and detained by the navy of neighboring Equatorial Guinea while operations by the tanker is investigated.

Reports reaching us said that Equatorial Guinea has separately arrested the vessel contending that it illegally entered its water without permission as it sought to evade the Nigerian forces.

Built in 2020, the VLCC is named Heroic Idun and according to the AIS signal, she remains anchored at the port of Luba, which is used mostly as a logging port on the island Bioko in the Gulf of Guinea. She has a crew of 26 aboard, 16 Indians, eight Sri Lankans, one Pole, and one Filipino, and is being held while the situation is being investigated.

We gathre that Equatorial Guinea Vice President Teodoro Nguema acknowledged on his Twitter account that the authorities have detained the Heroic Idun. He wrote, “Equatorial Guinea is still investigating the tanker detained last week in Annobon following a tip-off from Nigeria. So far, the tanker has incurred two serious offenses; first, entering our waters without prior authorization and second, navigating without an identifying flag.”

Findings show that Heroic Idun, registered in the Marshall Islands, was seen near the AKPO oil field, off the Nigerian coast, on August 7.  The Nigerian Navy’s Maritime Domain Awareness facility was the first to detect the vessel. They reported the vessel for suspicious activity saying that they did not believe the vessel had permits from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), nor other valid documents to be at the offshore field. Despite that, they believed the vessel was loading oil.

After the tanker departed the terminal, the Nigerian Navy ship Gongola tried to establish communication with the tanker. They were attempting to question the vessel on its activity and inspect its papers.

According to the media reports, the tanker resisted the contact with the Nigerian forces and at one point issued a warning of an attempted boarding that was recorded by the International Maritime Bureau. The media is calling the report a false alarm but says that when the vessel was ordered to proceed to Bonny Fairway for further interrogation, it instead increased its speed and changed its direction toward Sao Tome and Principe.

The Nigerian forces requested the assistance of neighboring Equatorial Guinea in the pursuit of the crude oil tanker which led to her eventual arrest by Equatorial Guinea forces.

Oil theft in Nigeria has assumed a frightening dimension in recent times causin government officials and economists to raise the alarm on the effect of such monstrous theft on the Nigerian economy.

Gbenga Komolafe, the head of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, said of the 141 million barrels of oil produced in the first quarter of 2022, only about 132 million barrels of oil were received at export terminals.

“This indicates that over nine million barrels of oil was lost to crude oil theft, this amounts to a loss in government revenue of about $1 billion in just one quarter. This trend poses an existential threat to the oil and gas sector and by extension the Nigerian economy if not curbed” Komolafe said in a statement.

Oil sector operators have expressed different views on the unprecedented oil theft in Nigeria

According to an oil industry expert “The people who want to stop oil theft are not interested in stopping it because, oil theft is an organised crime, with a network of stakeholders that cuts across many layers of interest-including the same agencies saddled with the responsibility to stop it”.

“Illegal oil bunkering, hot tapping or cold tapping, or the smuggling and diversion of petroleum products is an expensive enterprise that involves the collusion of both state officials and their agents. It may not be incorrect to argue that nothing has been done because those who should take the decision or their agents are themselves involved, or they have been compromised.”