…Vessel was loading from Chevron Terminal when it was caught
The oil tanker, labeled MT Deinmo, with International Maritime Organisation (IMO) number 7210526, caught loading crude oil illegally at Escravos near Warri is believed to be heading to Tema in Ghana.
This is one of the revelations made by top operatives of Tantita Security Services, the outfit belonging to leader of erstwhile Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta [MEND], Mr. Government Tompolo.
The firm was recently contracted by the federal government on a surveillance contract of N4.5billion monthly. The contract is basically to fish out oil thieves and pipeline vandals feasting on Nigeria’s crude oil anywhere nationwide.
The maritime intelligence consultant to Tantita Security Services, Mr. Warredi Enisuoh, narrated how the ship was nabbed by the Tompolo security operatives.
According to him, the vessel has been under investigation for a long time. The ship, Enisuoh further said, is not designed as an ocean going vessel, but a river vessel, which was converted to be used in the ocean for illegal operation.
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“I will say that the crew was quite smart, but they were not smarter than the country and the NNPC. So, what has happened is that it is among the lists of vessels being monitored constantly. It has been evading authorities for quite a while now and its route is very funny.
“It has been frequenting the Niger- Delta at the same time carrying crude illegally to Ghana, precisely Tema. That is the place where they normally go for discharge,” he said
He said the ambush for the ship finally paid off on October 6 when the company security operatives swooped on the crew while they were loading the vessel.
“What happened is that it came in to load, and they brought the ship from Escravos side inside the creeks where they didn’t know we were waiting and we allowed them to connect the hoses from the Escravos pipeline and from there, they started pumping crude into it. They were taken by surprise,” the maritime consultant stated
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He pointed out that the very pipeline the thieves were tapping from is a major line that goes to the Chevron Terminal. “Actually, there are about five compartments that stored crude oil and the total quantity is about 650 cubic metres of crude oil separated into several compartments because they couldn’t finish the operation as a result of the arrival of Tantita Security, their mission was aborted.”
He added that the captain of the ship claimed that they were hijacked but that the documents they had on them proved otherwise
According to the captain, he joined this ship actually two and half months ago, but record taken from this ship shows that this ship was detained in Nigeria back in September 2021 and the documents also showed that the vessel was handed over and released and he was the captain on board at the time.
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