NOSDRA seeks partnership in fight against oil theft

The National Oil Spills Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) has appealed to people in host communities to join the fight against oil theft in their respective communities because of the enormous damage done to the environment and for the sake of our future generations.

NOSDRA Zonal Director and Head of its office in Rivers state, Sir Cyrus Nkangwung made the appeal in an interview in his office in Port Harcourt, the Rivers state capital.

Observing that the spate of oil theft, resulting in oil spills is on the increase in the region, he appealed to the communities and citizens to join in the campaign against pipelines vandalism by exposing the perpetrators amongst them.

“We appeal to people to let NOSDRA know about genuine spills that occur in their communities so that NOSDRA will go in.

These are the things we want our people to do; that they should join the campaign against any person that is not from their area coming to damage their pipelines which will lead to spills in their areas, damaging their farmlands.

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They should not support it,” he appealed. Pointing out that the laws provide for payment of compensation only to oil spills due to equipment failure and not sabotage, he lamented that 90 per cent of oil spills are due to sabotage.

“There are 90 per cent of sabotage cases as against the ones due to equipment failure ones in our records. Our records are not even hidden. If you go to our website you’ll see the records in our oil spills monitor.

“Those of equipment failures are few. And that’s what saddens me as a person because we have a lot of spills that are of sabotage cases; a lot on a daily basis. Like today, they’re already on the field. It’s a great problem for the country.”

Emphasizing on the lasting impact of oil spills on the environment, he said “they should know that this environment belongs to them. If you spoil it, it’ll remain with you. Just like a house, if you keep debris in your house, it will smell into your nose.

So, people should desist from getting into things that will not all the time give them money because most of these things are done selfishly. “It’s not the whole community that plans to do these things. It’s young people that want money that do these things.”