Oil - theft

When reading about oil production I came across an interesting article, which links back to my first post about C02. It connects to the quote " The past is littered with the bodies of people who had stuff worth stealing" that I picked out from the video " The Age Of Stupid". It also links to the video "A Crude Awakening" which is posted under the heading "oil", as the video talks about oil being "the blood of our economy", and "oil is a magnet for war".

The article the I looked at was written by John Vidal, Sunday 6th October 2013, for The Guardian  

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/oct/06/oil-theft-costs-nigeria#start-of-comments

Heading - £1bn a month: the spiralling cost of oil theft in Nigeria

key points of interest the article - 

"According to President Goodluck Jonathan, 300,000-400,000 barrels of oil per day, or more than 10% of all Nigeria's production, is being lost at a cost to the state and oil companies of around £1bn a month – more than is spent on education and the health of the nation's 168 million people. Not only is Nigerian oil theft helping to keep the world price of oil high, it is causing corruption and social disorder."

From a anonymous oil trader

"Most of the oil is being stolen by the rich, he says. "It is dishonest for government and the oil companies to blame the poor for stealing the oil. The people in the communities are just the foot soldiers. Clearly this is a sophisticated organisation. Where do people get vessels, the money for bribes and security? It costs millions. What the poor take is very small. The racket goes deep into the security and political systems. Tens of thousands of tonnes of oil is being spirited away every week. All the authorities are involved – the oil companies, the military, the politicians. There's plenty of money to be made so everyone is in it.""

 Oforibika Tubomie, chief of Bolo youth council

“"If the government and the oil companies spent a fraction of what they lose to theft on developing the delta communities, they would not have these problems of theft. As it stands, the oil industry is run by a very small elite for a very few people. If nothing changes, the future here is bleak.”"

My Opinion 

This article highlight the conflict that oil brings due to its value, with value comes greed, and with greed comes corruption. Can this ever change? when we eventually run out of oil won't the focused of the greed move on to something else. I believe it is wrong when they say oil attracts war, the root of it comes down to greed.