Oil Bunkering in the Niger Delta

Abstract

Nigerian crude oil is said to be 'stolen' on an industrial scale (Katsouris & Sayne 2013, iii). United Nations' estimates have suggested that Nigeria's shadow oil industry has a turnover of US$2 billion per year (Burgis 2015, p. 177). Oil theft-known as 'bunkering'-involves tapping into existing infrastructure and extracting oil, either for sale or for local consumption in the oilrich Niger Delta region (Katsouris & Sayne 2013). Within Nigeria, oil bunkering is theft and can be prosecuted under the 1975 Anti-Sabotage Act or the Petroleum Act, although in practice little successful prosecution has taken place (Naanen 2019). The perspectives of social harm and received criminological literature both offer useful insight into the practice of bunkering. These are complementary approaches: the lens of social harm supplements and nuances the tools of traditional criminological theory. Together they provide a wider field of view, which not only encompasses individual culpability and state definitions of crime, but also emphasises the role of global social and economic structures that obstruct 'the fulfilment of fundamental needs' (Tifft & Sullivan 2001, p. 191)-and thus produce harm. These structures include entrenched corruption and inadequate public service provision (Koos & Pierskalla 2016). A social harm perspective also highlights the tunnel vision inherent in the 'language of crime' (Copson 2018, p. 49). Discourse around oil bunkering often adopts the terminology of theft. This language distracts from and disavows the claims of ownership that many Delta Nigerians lay to the land's natural resources.