Navy uncovers illegal refinery producing 200m litres of fuel daily in Rivers

Abdullateef Fowewe

The operatives of the Nigerian Navy have uncovered an illegal refinery that produces 200m litres of fuel daily along the Isaka/Ogoloma River in Rivers State.

This was disclosed in a video shared by AIT on Wednesday via X (formally Twitter).

The illegal refinery had a pipeline connected to a nearby oil wellhead operated by Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, used by the suspected oil thieves to siphon crude oil for refining, as disclosed by According to the Commander Nigerian Navy Ship Pathfinder, Cajethan Aniaku.

Aniaku noted that it took the command over five days of intelligence efforts to discover the location.

Aniaku could be saying, “The oil thieves have moved away from using normal metal storage tanks to cook and refine illegal stolen crude oil to AGO’ and other products, they are now using drums to do the refining. And that offers them some tactical advantage in the sense that it is cheaper to construct and very easy to dismantle.

“As the operation is still ongoing, they have destroyed over 500 drums containing over 200 litres of AGOs, amounting to over 2m litres of AGO, and the operation is still ongoing. And this site is capable of producing 200m litres of AGO, illegally refined products daily.”

However, Dailyeconomy had earlier reported that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited disclosed that the security operatives uncovered 33 illegal pipeline connections and 220 illegal refineries in Bayelsa, Rivers, Delta, and Abia States in one week.