I Feel Bad for Nigerian Oil

We all know how important oil is. It moves our cars, trucks boats, motors and more. We make necessary plastics from oil for cellphones to watches..

Nigeria is losing 400,000 barrels of oil a day to criminals. They are stealing it in a network of collusion and corruption, over land and by sea. Royal Dutch Shell is the biggest producer in Nigeria, and apparently they can't stop it.

I just heard this, this morning on NPR (c. 6 a.m., 12/15/12), and I couldn't help but think, How can I stop this thievery when hundreds, possibly thousands of thieves are involved? I can't change their hearts with rational argument, and explain how the world's natural resouirces are finite, and need to be distributed honestly and fairly. I can't go over there and fix it myself. I can't tell my governemnt to do something about it, and have them condemned for intervention.

But I do have a plan. How many state officials must be involved? A hundred? Two hundred? How many security forces are looking the other way, or actually helping with the theft? A thousand? Two thousand? Who are the marketeers buying this illegal oil? A hundred?

My solution is simple. Fire the ministers and government employees involved, as well as the oil workers including the corrupt security forces, and the others. If you can't round them up and put them in jail, at least disburse or deport them out of the country. Replace them with well-paid, highly trained, and honest workers, say for a year until everthing is stable and native Nigerians can be trained and educated to take over. If Royal Dutch Shell is serious about protecting their investment, and the legitimate Nigerian government is the fiduciary for the country's oil wealth, surely there are those who wish to stop the raping and plundering? 400,000 barrels a day is almost one third of Nigeria's daily output. So this corruption is on a massive scale.

We here in America have gone thru this same exact scenario. It was done legally by the robber-barons of the 1800's and early 1900's, until laws like the Sherman Antitrust Act were passed beginning in 1890. Even though they weren't enforced until Theodore Roosevelt was President, we would not be a stable country today without them.

How to stop it? Just laws don't do it. All laws need enforcement strategies and teeth to succeed. But this plan might succeed. It'll take months, but you'd start with a list of the bad folks. Surely good people know who they are. You'd have months of training for the replacements -- both the government workers, and security forces. You'd freeze and seize the accounts of the marketeers, perhaps even raid their homes.One fell swoop, transport all the replacements in one day, swoop in and sweep out the scum the next. Yes, hoodlums can be scum, I was one once.

And all this thievery, the miles of oil slicks from spilled oil, the pain and suffering to the honest workers, is for one reason. The inordinate desire for ease, comfort and wealth. Isn't that the way most criminals start out? Taking something that doesn't belong to them, so they can have it themselves, or hock it for cash?

I apologize for sounding self-righteous. It's easy to get that way in the face of injustice and crime. And I certainly don't intend to mean that wealth is "bad" or "evil." In and of itself it is not. In fact, it's absolutely necessary that every person have wealth. But limits are needed, even if they are self imposed like Warren Buffet, or Bill and Melinda Gates, who believe in higher taxation for the wealthy as one way of redistributing wealth.

Nigeria's environmental situation, some say, is even worse that the mere loss of stolen oil. Miles and miles of Nigerian coasts have been fouled, besides the water itself. At least let someone stop the environmental bleeding.