Page 12 - Downstream Monitor - MEA Week 24

DMEA terminals & shiPPinG DMEA
NOC’s military challenges
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LIByA’S National Oil Corp. (NOC) has largely managed to sustain production, despite the Lib- yan National Army’s (LNA) advances on Tripoli. Signs of strain, though, are showing. In May, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported, production was 1.16 million bpd, level with the previous month and up from 1.07 million bpd in March.
NOC has complained of military forces occu- pying the Ras Lanuf terminal, on June 13. It also noted that shelling had caused a re at its airport warehouse, near LPG tanks, on June 16.
Occupation of the terminal potentially makes it a military objective, NOC said, and could require the company withdraw its personnel from the port. Such a decision would be based on a risk assessment. e facility can export around 250,000 bpd.
Major General Abdullah Nur al-Din al-hamali, commanding around 80 military personnel, entered the port on June 5. ey have commandeered a building in the terminal and are using it for military purposes. They have also taken a number of dormitories, allocated to harouge Oil Operations (hOO), a NOC
subsidiary, and attempted to refuel a warship. “NOC works on behalf of all Libyans,” said NOC chairman Eng. Mustafa Sanalla. “We can- not accept a situation where any party to the cur-
rent con ict misuses oil facilities.”
Shelling in Tripoli, on June 15, triggered the
re near the LPG tanks. e ames were brought under control by re ghters from Brega Petro- leum Marketing Co. (BPMC). NOC and BPMC called for forces to withdraw from the area, in order to avoid damaging these tanks.
“We reiterate our call for an immediate cease re to ongoing hostilities and an end to the blatant targeting and militarisation of oil sector facilities,” Sanalla commented.
Dealing with the strain of military forces around its operations comes on top of the every- day challenges facing the company. On June 9, for instance, NOC reported high temperatures had disrupted an electricity generator, taking around 30,000 bpd of production o ine at the Sarir oil eld. is is Libya’s largest eld, with 4.8 billion barrels of reserves. Production is around 155,000 bpd but repairs at another area should allow it to add 60,000 bpd.™
Bunkering and the Nigerian army
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NIGERIA’S armed forces remain involved in large-scale oil the and re ning, according to a discussion paper produced by Transparency International and the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC). The two NGOs carried out research in the rst half of 2018, in Bayelsa, Cross River and Rivers states.
Reports of payments being made to military personneltosecure“tappingpoints”,whereoilis illegally li ed from pipelines, are widespread. In Cross River, for instance, extraction points are less than a kilometre from the Naval Base NNS Victory and an army training school.
This “suggests, at best, awareness of the schemes and at worst, active participation”, the report said. It went on to cite some focus group participants as saying they had seen Joint Task Force (JTF) members of “being closely involved in oil the from the [Nigerian National Petro- leum Corp.] NNPC pipeline, and receiving a share of oil products in return for providing cover and protection”.
e JTF is charged with securing the Niger Delta and tackling illegality, including artisanal re ning operations. While the force does spo- radically destroy sites, this is seen by participants in the industry as a show of strength, intended to highlight the military’s ability to dictate terms in oil bunkering.
e report went on to quote a source in Port harcourt as saying bunkerers moving products through military checkpoints could pre-pay in order to be able to move unhindered. ere appears to be a uniform price – of about 1,000 naira (US$2.8) per drum – suggesting a degree of co-ordination across the states.
A failure to pay o security is seen as highly risky, it continued. It cited one interviewee as say- ing “It is impossible for any person to transport even a drop of product on these rivers without rst getting the understanding of the military. Nobody will expose his investment to that type of risk. ere is no hiding, they will nd you and the punishment for trying to bypass them is that your produce and the boat will be burnt. Even before the boatman agrees to give you his boat to carry product, the rst question is, “have you settled security?””
The CISLAC and Transparency Interna- tional report comes as Shell Nigeria has been complaining of the impact of oil theft on its business. A spokesman for the company, speak- ing at a workshop in Lagos last week, said “the repeated sabotage of recently repaired pipelines exposes the environment and people to renewed and worsening pollution. Oil the is focused on short term scal bene ts, ignoring the long-term e ects of environmental degradation.”™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 24 19•June•2019