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The Nigerian Navy says it has recovered approximately 80,000 litres of suspected stolen crude oil from two separate hideouts in Delta State, the latest in a string of anti-theft operations carried out under its ongoing Operation Delta Sentinel.
Details of the recoveries were disclosed in an operational report released in Abuja on Tuesday by Captain Abiodun Folorunsho, Director of Naval Information. According to Folorunsho, personnel attached to the Nigerian Navy Ship Delta carried out the first operation on September 21 in the Oteghele general area, where they discovered a large dugout reservoir containing roughly 30,000 litres of crude oil. Two days later, on September 23, a separate operation in the Obodo Amadino general area uncovered a second dugout reservoir holding approximately 50,000 litres. Folorunsho said the recovered crude in both cases was handled in accordance with the navy’s established procedures for such seizures.
The two crude oil recoveries weren’t the only outcome of the week’s activity in the state. A day between the two oil operations, on September 22, personnel from NNS Delta carried out a joint exercise with the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency targeting suspected illicit drug activity in the Warri general area. That operation resulted in the arrest of three suspects and the seizure of roughly 15 kilogrammes of suspected cannabis sativa, along with half a gramme each of cocaine and crystal methamphetamine.
Folorunsho described the combined results as evidence of the navy’s ability to address several overlapping dimensions of maritime and coastal insecurity at once, tying crude oil theft, illegal petroleum activity and drug trafficking together as connected problems that require coordinated, multi-agency responses rather than separate, siloed efforts. He said the navy continues to work closely with other security agencies to disrupt criminal networks operating across its area of responsibility in the Niger Delta.
Delta State’s dugout reservoirs are a familiar feature of Nigeria’s long-running oil theft problem. Rather than tapping directly into pipelines in ways that leave an obvious trail, criminal networks operating across the Niger Delta frequently dig large concealed pits to store crude siphoned from pipelines or illegal refining operations before it can be transported and sold on, making these hidden reservoirs a recurring target for naval patrols in the region.
This week’s recovery fits a pattern that has repeated itself regularly in recent months. Back in August, the navy disclosed a similar operation in the Ogba-Egbema-Ndoni axis of Rivers State, where it deactivated two illegal refining sites and recovered roughly 85,000 litres of stolen crude products, describing the site as part of a previously dismantled refining network that had since been reactivated by criminal operators. Separately, naval personnel in Ondo State intercepted a wooden boat carrying about 100,000 litres of stolen crude oil along the Idiogba-Mahin coastline, seizing discharge hoses and pumping equipment alongside the crude itself and taking samples for laboratory analysis.
The scale of the underlying problem these operations are meant to address is significant. Nigeria lost an estimated 437,000 barrels of crude oil a day to theft and related criminal activity in 2022, a figure equating to roughly $23 million in lost revenue every single day. That pattern continued into 2023, when the country lost 65.7 million barrels of crude in the month of March alone. Beyond the direct hit to government revenue, oil theft has repeatedly disrupted operations for the international oil companies and other stakeholders that make up much of Nigeria’s upstream petroleum sector, complicating production planning and infrastructure maintenance across the Niger Delta.
In response, Nigeria’s military has leaned on a series of dedicated operations targeting oil theft specifically, including Operation Delta Safe and Operation Dakatar da Barawo, both run in coordination with state and local governments, other security agencies and the oil companies themselves. Those combined efforts have shown measurable results over time. By August 2024, then Chief of Naval Staff Emmanuel Ikechukwu Ogalla reported that Nigeria’s crude oil production had climbed to between 1.6 million and 1.7 million barrels a day, an improvement the navy attributed directly to enhanced security measures aimed at curbing theft along pipelines and in the creeks where illegal refining and storage operations tend to concentrate.
This week’s Delta State recoveries add another data point to that broader effort, even as the recurring nature of these operations, month after month, in different parts of the Niger Delta, underscores just how persistent and adaptable the criminal networks behind Nigeria’s oil theft problem remain. Whether sustained pressure from operations like Delta Sentinel continues to push production upward and theft downward over the coming months will likely depend on how quickly displaced networks are able to relocate and rebuild in new hideouts once existing ones are discovered and dismantled.
