The State and Criminalization of Artisanal Oil Refining in Nigeria

The contamination of large water bodies through crude oil production led the people of Nigeria’s oil-bearing Niger Delta to seek new means of livelihood away from aquaculture. This led some of their youths to engage in distillation of crude oil using locally fabricated equipment in what is known as artisanal refineries. In order to supply their makeshift refineries with crude oil, they illegally tap into pipelines and other petroleum infrastructures which traverse the region. Both their refining activities and their method of obtaining crude oil are adjudged illegal and so were criminalized by the Nigerian state. To enforce their criminalization, the government resorted to the deployment of joint military taskforces and other kinetic measures. But rather than quell the practices, the government’s responses appear to have aggravated the situation. This paper uses a variety of sources, including focus group discussions (FGDs), key informant interviews (KIIs), and field observations to investigate how the criminalization of artisanal oil refining operations has contributed to worsening the security environment of petroleum production in Nigeria. Our findings show that artisanal oil refining, though instigated by the deplorable economic and environmental challenges in the oil-bearing communities, has attracted a complex web of actors whose capacity for clandestine activities is immense. As such we found the government’s responses inadequate for dealing with the problem due to its failure to both unravel the web of interests and address the root causes of the problem. We then prescribe a dynamic problem-solving approach for resolving oil activism in Nigeria holistically.