By Dipo Olowookere
One of the major oil companies in Nigeria, Aiteo Group, has raised an alarm over the rate at which one of its pipelines is being vandalised by hoodlums.
In a report on Sunday, Reuters said the company expressed worry that the sustained economic sabotage by vandals on the Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL) it operates has led to significant losses in production.
“The disruptions that these attacks have brought about has led to direct, irretrievable and significant losses in production and consequently has created revenue deficits that directly impact all the stakeholders,” Aiteo disclosed in a statement on Sunday.
Continuing, the oil firm noted that, “By virtue of this level of sabotage, the NCTL has been shut down for 61 days (two months) this year alone, constituting 83 percent cause of downtime in this year only.”
It further said over the last four years, more than 200 shut down days had been recorded on the oil facility located in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of the country.
Nigeria is the largest producer of oil in Africa and is not new to attacks on oil facilities in the oil-producing Niger Delta region.
In fact, constant destruction of its oil facilities by militants resulted in the country going into recession in 2016 because production level significantly went down coupled with the decline in global oil prices. The crude oil output during the period decreased to almost one million barrels per day from 2.2 million barrels per day (mbpd).
It took the intervention of the then Acting President (Vice President) Yemi Osinbajo, who visited stakeholders in the region, to reduce the attacks, leading to improved production being witnessed today.
But Aiteo is worried at renewed attacks on its facility. The NCTL, one of two that exports Bonny Light crude oil, has been shut down more than once this year. It was shut down due to a fire in April, and placed under force majeure in September.
Aiteo is one of the supporters of the Nigerian economy. The organisation is the headline sponsor of the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF), investing around $9.2 million in the sport for next five years.
