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Crude Oil Import From Iraq: Another Obasanjo’s Grand Deceit At Kaduna Refinery By Saint Azuh
The revelation that the Kaduna Refinery now imports crude oil feedstock from Basra, Iraq is not only laughable but could best be described as a well- packaged grand deceit by President Olusegun Obasanjo, the sole administrator of the Petroleum Ministry since May 1999.
A careful look at the details of the argument put forward for the deceit at the Kaduna refinery would confirm that the initiative which is foolish also has sinister intentions.
The first claim that the flow line that supplied crude oil feedstock from Warri, Niger Delta to the plant was vandalized and had remained in a state of disrepair since January 2006 is pure truth. Crude oil cannot be pumped from Warri because in addition to the vandalization of the line, the flowstation itself has remained closed due to community agitation Shell by unemployed Niger Delta youths. But this is where the truth stopped. Nigerians should ask their government why that fowline has not been repaired until now. And rather than fix it back for use for the critical operation of the Kaduna refinery, government in its wisdom preferred to import crude oil from no other place but Basra, Iraq at a higher overall cost and risk.
Government also claimed that since there was no way the Kaduna refinery can get crude oil feedstock from the Niger Delta as a result of the restiveness, the federal government instructed the Management of the Kaduna plant to source and secure crude oil supply from abroad to help the refinery resume production as quickly as possible. This is pure lie. The NNPC by such explanation insulted the intelligence of not just the enlightened people of this country but also the entire campaign of transparency and accountability as preached the Obasanjo-led administration.
It may interest all concerned Nigerians to know that the Kaduna Refinery right from day one was designed and built to use crude oil feedstock of the grade and quality different from the grades we produce in the Niger Delta. The plant was designed to run on crude grades found in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Venezuela rather than the two grades produced in this country- the Bonny Light and Forcados.
With the above picture, the entire issue of who actually destroyed the crude oil trunk line that supplied the Forcados crude from Delta state to the Kaduna plant is becoming clearer. If Kaduna refinery was designed to run on crude from the Middle East, could it not have been possible that some highly- connected contractors may have sponsored the destruction of the trunk line to cut off crude feedstock supply from the Niger Delta and make way for the business of securing the lucrative contracts of importing crude oil. Could it not have been possible that the destruction of the trunk line from Warri was not solely a restive matter but part of the plot to rubbish and thus discard the NNPC’s smart initiative of blending our Forcdos crude with Niger Delta condensate to run the Kaduna plant?
Another poser is: Why oil from Basra in Iraq and not from areas where there is no conflict or rather civil war? This question is very important as it borders on crude oil theft from conflict zones. So let’s leave it just as an unanswerable poser.
In actual fact, what President Obasanjo has done is to import Iraqi Basra crude and ask the Niger Delta producers to send condensate to the Kaduna plant to help the refinery make a blend. This was how the Kaduna Refinery Acting Managing Director, Olayinka Agoro reportedly explained it: “We have carried out a pilot test with a blend of 70 percent of the Iraqi Basra crude oil and 30 percent of Warri condensate. With this combination, the refinery has been able to come up with some products although not as if the refinery was using crude from the Niger Delta Escravos”.
The real suspicion in the entire Iraqi oil import deal is that even after getting the crude from Basra, the NNPC would still need to blend it with condensate which is still expected to come from the Niger Delta especially the Warri axis.
More so, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) as revealed by the Kaduna plant manager will not pay for the Iraqi crude oil as it was “part of an exchange programme under which Nigeria’s Bonny Light crude oil can exchange for Arabian, Venezuelan and Kuwaiti crude oils”.
Interestingly, the Iraqi Basra crude grade was not initially part of the existing crude swap arrangement as indicated by the NNPC official. So how did it suddenly enter the picture?
The truth is that unable to get the originally specified crude oil grades because they are more expensive in the spot market and more difficult to source, the President agreed with the suppliers (contractors) who claimed that the Iraqi crude, “the only one they can lay their hands on, can meet the specification of the Kaduna Refinery base oil needs”. If truly the agents of government are actually in Iraq for an oil swap deal, if for nothing but on moral grounds, we may need to find out who we are dealing with in Iraq. Is the NNPC getting the supply from official Iraq sources or their agents? Obviously, any thorough check on the Basra oil import would clearly show that agents of Government are supplying Nigeria’s Kaduna refinery with conflict or rather stolen oil from Iraq.
Another serious suspicion hangs on the proposed routing of both the Iraqi oil import and the Niger Delta condensate. As reportedly explained by the NNPC official, although the imported Iraqi oil will still pass through Warri but this time it will be moved to Owerri first before being pumped to the Kaduna refinery. How on earth is this going to happen because there is no link between the eastern and the western arms of the existing national oil flowline grid?
The entire concept is nothing but another conduit pipe to steal public funds and to covertly sell huge volumes of crude oil from the Niger Delta in the pretence of exchanging for the preferred crude stock for the Kaduna plant. The actual plan is for the suppliers (government contractors) who are known agents of the presidency, to start siphoning huge volumes of Nigeria’s sweet crude and in exchange, sends back refined products from the Middle East. It is also suspected that these same government contractors intend to get the crude oil grades from the eastern flank of the Niger Delta and supply it the Kaduna refinery as imported Iraqi crude through the existing eastern flank of the national pipeline network that runs from Port Harcourt to the Kaduna plant.
If this is not true, NNPC should publish the names of the contract agents both in Nigeria and in Iraq and publicly state the volume-for –volume ratio involve in the crude oil swap deal. The NNPC should also explain how it hopes to get the imported Iraqi oil to Kaduna from the Niger Delta where the cargoes are expected to land at the coastline facilities.
The corporation should in addition, explain why condensate can be transferred from Warri or elsewhere in the Niger Delta to the Kaduna Refinery but not crude oil as the problem of damaged pipelines was adduced for the current alternative offshore sourcing.
The NNPC should make public the comparative cost benefit or in a layman’s language, the selling price expected in the eventual marketing of the refined products from the abnormally extended process of securing and transferring both the imported crude oil and the Niger Delta condensate. |