The Headquarters of the 6 Division, Nigeria Army, Port Harcourt, discovered 14 crude oil reservoirs carrying about three million litres of stolen petroleum in Odagwa Etche, Etche Local Government Area, Rivers State.
Furthermore, the Army stated that the reservoir included 49 boilers used to refine stolen petroleum in the region.
Maj. Gen. Jamal Abdussalam, General Officer Commanding, 6 Division, Nigeria Army, Port Harcourt, told reporters Thursday that he wanted Nigerians to know what was going on while leading them around the reservoirs in the dense forest of Odagwa Etche.
Abdusalam revealed that the division’s credible intelligence officers discovered around 14 reservoirs containing up to 200, 000 litres of crude oil in the forest.
He said:
“You can see that this place is in a deep forest even if you are using helicopters and military drones you will not be able to see what we actually saw here on the ground. Credible intelligence led us to this location.
“We have discovered so many illegal activities. As you can see, we have seen reservoirs that can contain upwards of 200, 0000 litres of crude oil.
“We have discovered about 14 of them in this bush. We have also discovered boilers capable of processing crude oil, about 49 of them all located inside this bush and we have seen the network of hose and cables connected around the whole area.
“The crude oil we have discovered in this place is in excess of the daily crude oil export of Nigeria. This is very pathetic and very sad to note.
“Here we discovered 14 reservoirs and each reservoir stored a minimum of 200,000 litres of crude oil. So, simple math will give you in excess of three million litres of crude oil that is stored. We are not talking about the ones that have been processed and taken out; these are the ones that we have discovered.
“This place is called Odagwa in Rivers State and inside this place we have well heads, many of them we don’t know the exact number of well heads around here.
“Most of them are not in use, but you can see that it’s from these wellheads that these people put their pipes to siphon this oil.”
cc: Punch Ng
