The Nigerian Navy has shut down an illegal refining site in Promise Land Community, along Nanabie Creek in Bonny Local Government Area of Rivers State, and destroyed the equipment found there.

Personnel of Forward Operating Base (FOB) Bonny located the site on 30 September following intelligence. It contained one large cooking pot and three large storage tanks. On Friday, 2 October, a team led by the base commanding officer, Captain SMC Umeh, destroyed the installation and all associated equipment in line with the Navy’s standing procedure for such seizures. The service said the action denies operators the pot and tanks needed to process and store stolen crude.

No suspects were named, and the Navy did not give the volume of product recovered at Promise Land. It also did not say whether anyone was at the site when it was destroyed, or whether the tanks still held any oil.

The operation was carried out under Operation Delta Sentinel, the Navy’s campaign against oil theft in the Niger Delta creeks. FOB Bonny has recorded a string of similar finds this year. In July, the Director of Naval Information, Captain Abiodun Folorunsho, said the base uncovered nine sites in the Wakama/Bolo and Aworkiri communities. They included 23 dugout pits, 18 of which held about 104,000 litres of suspected stolen crude, along with five newly dug pits not yet in use, eight locally made pots and three storage tanks. On 29 September, the same base reported about 85,000 litres in 16 concealed pits in the Allison area, barely a week after another camp there had been shut.