The Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mele Kyari has disclosed that oil vandals have forced the country to shut down production at several fields.
Mr Kyari disclosed that the country lost a minimum of 200,000 barrels per day to oil theft and was forced to shut down production at several terminals. The GMD pegged the value of oil stolen in 2021 at $4 billion.
He stated that vandalism has escalated in 2022 to an average of 250,000 per day, hence, at the average price of $100 per barrel, the country is losing $1.5 billion per day to oil theft.
The GMD disclosed these on Thursday while appearing before the House Committee on Petroleum (Upstream). The committee is investigating oil theft in Nigeria.
“The act of vandals and thieves have gotten to a level we have to shut down the transnational pipeline and declare force majeure on it. And also NCTL pipeline, thereby leading us to declare force majeure on bonny. As we speak now, there is no production into the TMK and the NCTL because we can no longer sustain the operations.
“This is not because we don’t go back to replace the pipelines that are tapped, because as we do, we have repeated insertions on these pipelines by vandals. It got to a point where the bonny terminal when you inject 239,000 barrels per day, it got to a point when we can receive only 3,000 per day. There is simply no reason why anyone should continue.
“Yes it came to a level when we can only receive 3,000 barrels per day and it got to zero and we shut down.
“There are obvious implications, when you lose close to 200,000 per day, even at average $65 per day, we lost close to $4billion January and December 2021 in terms of value lost. In 2022, January to date, the losses have escalated to over 250,000 per day and at current prices of $100 per barrel. Even within this short period, we have lost close to N1.5 billion per day,” he said.
The revelation by Mr Kyari is coming in the wake of a claim by the Chairman of United Bank of Africa, Tony Elumelu and the comment by the General Overseer of the Redeem Christian Church of God, Enoch Adeboye.
