An oil tanker traveling to Cameroon with 800,000 liters of stolen crude, according to the state-owned oil firm of Nigeria, was stopped offshore.

It declared that the ship will be scuttled as a warning.

Nigeria's state-owned oil company said that the oil had been stolen from a well in the state of Ondo in the country's southwest.

The Nigerian economy suffers greatly from oil theft from pipelines and wells in the Niger Delta, which deprives it of much-needed cash.

The oil business claimed that the tanker, which was registered in Nigeria, had been operating for the previous 12 years in what it dubbed stealth mode.