The Nigerian Navy says it deactivated 71 illegal refinery sites and seized hundreds of thousands of litres of stolen petroleum products during its operations in the Niger Delta in July 2025.
By Chimezie Godfrey
The Nigerian Navy says it deactivated 71 illegal refinery sites and seized hundreds of thousands of litres of stolen petroleum products during its operations in the Niger Delta in July 2025.
The operations, carried out under Operation Delta Sanity relaunched in December 2024, targeted crude oil theft and other maritime crimes across Rivers, Delta, Bayelsa, and Akwa Ibom states.
According to Commodore A. Adams-Aliu, Director of Information, the Navy’s patrol teams discovered and dismantled dugout pits, ovens, underground reservoirs, pumping machines, storage tanks, and boats used in the illegal refining and transportation of petroleum products.
On July 4, six illegal sites were uncovered around Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni in Rivers State, containing over 66,000 litres of suspected crude oil and 40,000 litres of illegally refined diesel. Similar raids in Delta, Bayelsa, and Akwa Ibom throughout the month led to the arrest of suspected smugglers and the seizure of petrol allegedly meant for smuggling into Cameroon.
The largest haul came from Biseni community in Yenagoa LGA, Bayelsa State, where over 250,000 litres of crude oil were recovered during follow-up operations on July 23.
In total, the Navy said its July operations denied oil thieves about 411,400 litres of crude oil, 87,825 litres of illegally refined diesel, 72,000 litres of kerosene, and 21,900 litres of petrol.
The service attributed the success to its renewed drive under the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ikechukwu Ogalla, to end crude oil theft and boost national oil output. The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission recently confirmed that the country’s production had exceeded 1.8 million barrels per day.