Huawei Deploys IPMS To Track Crude Oil Theft, Artisanal Refineries

A Chinese multinational technology firm, Huawei Technologies, has disclosed that it has developed an intelligent pipeline monitoring system to help tackle crude oil theft in Nigeria.
This was revealed by the Director of Huawei Nigeria Enterprise Business, Li Wei, at a news briefing in Abuja, at the ongoing Nigerian International Energy Summit.
According to Wei, the new technology, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) would help to ensure pipeline safety and reduce theft and vandalism through its highly precise and accurate system.
Huawei-developed fibre vibration intrusion warning system uses Artificial Intelligence to identify intrusion scenarios accurately.
With high identification precision, accurate positioning, and quick response, it would help to ensure pipeline safety and reduce theft and vandalism.
According to the CEO of Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, Gbenga Komolafe, Nigeria loses as much as 150,000 barrels of oil a day to criminals who illegally tap pipelines crisscrossing the Niger Delta region.
In its latest audit report made public in July, 2021, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) indicated that in 2019, Nigeria lost 42.25million barrels of crude oil to oil theft, valued at $2.77billion.
This was meant to be an improvement because, in 2018, 53.28million barrels were stolen while in 2021, 193million barrels of crude vanished from Nigeria’s resources.
Huawei acknowledged that these statistics were indicative of the gravity of the problem, which as a top priority hence creating a solution.“Faced with the ongoing volatility of international oil prices, Huawei believes that the digital transformation of Nigeria’s upstream sector is a top priority,” Wei added.
Oil theft is a menace to the extent that Nigerian production fell last year to less than 1.5million barrels a day of crude equivalent in December from about 1.7million barrels in January, according to NUPRC data.
That’s lower than the quota set by OPEC+ for Nigeria.
Each administration of the country has tried to curb the issue, all to no avail.
In 2019, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) worked with French data firm, Kpler, to help it tackle smugglers plying Nigerian waters and using satellite data and the firm’s software.
Kpler’s platform monitors 24/7, logging erratic journeys like this and changes to ships’ drafts that indicate cargoes’ on or off-loading into an algorithm for the DPR to interpret.
In September, 2021, the Federal Government decided to set up an inter-ministerial committee on the recovery of crude oil and illegally refined petroleum products in the Niger Delta region comprising the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC), the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), all backed by the armed forces and security agencies.
Yet, by the end of the year, 193million barrels of crude oil could not be accounted for.
Wei added that the company had signed an ICT academy agreement with over 110 universities and schools and had trained more than 1,000 civil servants and 40,000 young students in Nigeria in order to ”build a strong talent base camp to promote Nigeria’s digital economy development.’’