Years ago, I had been studying organized crime in Nigeria. One of the things that astonished me at the time was the amount of trafficking in stolen crude oil. "

Years ago, I had been studying organized crime in Nigeria. One of the things that astonished me at the time was the amount of trafficking in stolen crude oil. "Bunkering" it is called. Gangs would tap into pipelines that were transporting crude from oil fields to ports. They'd put it in barrels and haul trucks full of barrels to their own docks where they'd fill smaller tankers. Their markets were typically the same places that would purchase smuggled Iranian oil. Sometimes, satellite imagery would show the small tankers alongside larger tankers. The belief was that the bunkered oil would then get mixed in with "legit" oil.