By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited has said that Nigeria is currently losing 470,000 barrels per day of crude oil amounting to $700 million monthly due to oil theft.
A statement by the NNPC said that Mr Bala Wunti, the Group General Manager, National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPMS), made this disclosure while speaking during a tour of the facilities of the NNPCL.
Mr Wunti said the pipelines particularly those around Bonny terminal cannot function due to the activities of criminals.
He also argued that the number of barrels stolen daily is very huge, adding that about 270 barrels per day that were supposed to be loaded in Bonny are no longer going to be loaded because of theft.
“If you’re producing 30,000 barrels a day, every month, you get 1,940 barrels. So what it means is that you can take it to 270 every four days, calculate it in a month; you will have seven cargos on a million barrels, that’s seven million barrels,” he said.
“When you multiply seven million barrels by $100 that is $700 million lost per month and about 150,000 barrels expected are differed; we are not producing due to security challenges,” he added.
The official noted that “the Shell Petroleum Company (SPDC) trunk line, TNP transnational pipeline cannot be operated and this has been like this since March the 3rd that we put in this. Just take your calculator, 150,000, it means if you want to arrive at 1 million barrels per day, it means every week as a minimum, basically for one week alone, it’s four cargo and four cargo is four million barrels. Four million barrels formula bar or $100 is $400 million.
“So, you can do your calculations by yourself, take whatever price you want, take this to multiply by the number of days that have been shortened since March 3rd.”
The NNPC official said Forcados is not completely secure due to some challenges, but assured that they were addressing it, and in two weeks it may be fixed.
“But we also have Brass about 100,000 barrels, which is operated by Agip and is also facing insecurity and vandalism,” he said.
He said the impact of vandal activities caused low crude oil production, interrupted gas supply, countrywide interruption of distribution of petroleum products, refineries’ downtimes, and increasing instability in the oil and gas market.
“I will tell you the major thing that affects us. Nigeria will suffer for it; the revenues are impacted, so we can only appeal to them to rein in themselves, the oil theft situation is regrettable. It’s not going on across the whole of the Niger Delta, there are trunk lines that are more impacted on, I think the Bonny trunk line ranks highest.
“Our major challenge as a country is our capability to respond and that is as a result of several factors, the terrain as well as some incapacity that we have.”
Continuous oil theft and infrastructural deficit have seen Nigeria lose its status as Africa’s top oil producer, sitting behind Angola.
