Filipino oil bunkerers

13 Filipinos Jailed 65 Years for Oil Theft
By Joseph Ushigiale, 02.21.2009

13 Filipinos were convicted to five years in jail or given the option of a N1 million fine each yesterday after pleading guilty to handling oil products suspected to have been stolen in the Niger Delta.
The accused persons who were arrested on November 14 2008, and charged to court on December 17 2008, initially pleaded not guilty on arraignment, but later changed their plea.
The charges against them included conspiracy to commit felony; to deal in petroleum products without authorization; dealing in 12,000 metric tonnes of petroleum products, suspected to be crude oil; and bunkering in a vessel marked MT-AKUADA.
Justice Chukwura Nnamani of the Federal High Court, Benin in his judgement, sentenced the 13 accused persons to five years imprisonment, or a fine of one million naira (N1,000,000) each.
The names of the accused persons (all-male) are: Erwin Anas 47 years, Celso T. Bael 40 years, Pedro Gementiza 46 years, Reagan Colorge 24 years, Ronnie Fabricante 52 years, Sebastian G. Tedoosio 37 years, George N. Balore 50 years, Roland D. Caro 25 years, Marcelo Galola 34 years, Revel A. Dos Dosir Jnr. 24 years, Richard Peniano34 years, Arjay Alvarez 21 years and Celso V. Zapauta 47 years.
A team of naval personnel from the Forward Operation Base (FOB) had on November 14, arrested the Filipinos on board a vessel named MT-AKUADA.
The vessel was loaded with 12,000 metric tonnes of petroleum products and was already on outbound transit around Escravos Breakwater.
Once the occupants of the vessel were intercepted, they were handed over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Port Harcourt through the Joint Task Force (Operation Restore Hope), Warri.
Barely three weeks ago, seven Ghanaians and a Nigerian, were also arrested in the Niger Delta with stolen petroleum product worth over N300 million. The eight of them are due to be arraigned at a Benin Federal High Court next Tuesday.
Some estimates say 100,000 barrels of crude are stolen from the Niger Delta each day, amounting to some five percent of the country's production and equivalent to around $4 million daily or $1.5 billion a year at current prices.
It is shipped out of Nigeria and sold on the international market. Human Rights Watch has put the amount stolen at two or three times that level.