the international oil companies, IOCs could not agree on the method to be adopted.
Industry
sources according to Vanguard, while the IOCs favour the use of drones and other
high technology devices to monitor oil facilities, security agencies, such as
the military and State Security Services, SSS are opposed to that, citing
security concerns.
Before now, the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ibok
Ibas, had said that the Nigerian Navy would collaborate with other security
agencies to deploy any measure that will result to checkmating illegal oil bunkering
and pipeline vandalism.
Ibas had stated: “We are deploying electronic
surveillance equipment to ensure that this menace is brought to an end.
“Secondly, the Navy has standby response teams ready to move at the quickest
deployment because even if the drones are deployed as disclosed by the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, it is the Navy that will be required to
implement the response aspect.”
Security monitoring However, Vanguard learnt
that the Navy must have succumbed to pressures and aligned with other security
agencies who cautioned against the use of drones and remotely operated area
vehicle, ROAV.
The security agents were said to have insisted on the need to
guard against allowing the technology to slip into the hands of terrorists,
militants and kidnappers, who they fear, could use the technology to undermine
the precarious security of the country. Drones are automated (pilotless) micro
aircraft used for security monitoring and surveillance purposes, often
described as “eyes in the sky.”
According to the Social Science Research
Network, SSRN, drones are “less expensive and more efficient than conventional
aircraft at tracking the movements of large numbers of people without their
knowledge.
The capabilities of onboard instruments like high-resolution
cameras, infrared devices, facial recognition systems, and other sensory
enhancing technologies will make it virtually impossible to shield oneself from
government watch.”
This informed its use by the IOCs to monitor oil
installations in Nigeria. It was learnt that between 2015 and 2016, Nigeria
recorded about 3,400 attacks on the various pipelines in the country.
The
effect was a shut-in of about 250,000 barrels a day and a net loss of over $7
billion.
According to an official of one of the IOCs who preferred to be
anonymous, it is very expensive to use helicopter to monitor oil installations
in Nigeria.
He stated: “Helicopter is more expensive.
Oil majors are not
finding it funny, cost wise to deploy helicopter, especially this period that
oil price is low.
That is why we are talking about drones. Moreover, a drone
can be deployed both at night and day, but helicopter is used only during the
day,” he said. The plan of the oil majors to use drones in Nigeria followed the
successful use in other oil producing countries.
In 2013, ConocoPhillips (COP)
conducted the first drone flight in commercial airspace off the coast of
Alaska, in the United States of America. It used the ScanEagle, built by a
subsidiary of Boeing Corporation.
In 2014, BP Plc (BP) received Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) approval to use drones to monitor its pipeline
network in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. It’s using the Puma AE, built by
California-based AeroVironment Incorporated. Also in 2014, Royal Dutch Shell
Plc began using drones from VDOS Global to inspect its flare stacks in the Gulf
of Mexico.
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