Nigeria bleeding to death at crude oil terminals, ADP tells Buhari

National chairman of the Action Democratic Party, Engineer Yagbagi Yusuf Sani has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to beam searchlight on the upstream sector of the oil industry.

Sani gave the suggestion on Thursday night while addressing his party faithful at the party first non-elective national convention in Abuja.

The ADP chairman said Nigeria loses close to 250,000 barrels of crude oil per day to oil thieves.  He said the volume translates to over $25 million daily in revenue.

Sani said the revenue lost at crude oil terminals at the Niger Delta region was enough to fund the budget deficit.

He said: “There are lots of infractions being perpetuated by operators in the Oil and Gas industry with full knowledge of the successive governments in Nigeria and no concrete action taken to solve them in spite of the huge revenue losses to the nation.

“We believe ending this endemic corruption in the Oil and Gas sector will free a huge amount of resources to fund the budget as Nigeria is capable of doing more than the mere N10 trillion budget which is just about USD34 billion dollars for a nation of nearly 200 million population.

” The recent report by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) indicates that the nation loses about $4.1 or N123billion annually due to poor crude oil production metering.

“The report published by one of the nation’s daily newspapers warned that unless the government takes appropriate measures in the metering of crude oil, production will continue to pose a serious threat to the nation’s revenue target. The report noted that the government could realize only 58 per cent of its projected revenues from January to June, 2019, which shows how poor oil production can cause huge losses in revenue.

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“In NEITI’s audit reports from 2012-2015, Nigeria lost over  $9.89billion worth of crude oil due to poor metering infrastructure. Within this period, over 107 million barrels of oil were not properly accounted for. The latest figures show that Nigeria loses over 250,000 barrels of crude oil per day to oil thieves. This translates to over $25 million daily in revenue.

“According to NEITI, Nigeria is the only oil-producing country without adequate metering to ascertain the accurate quantity of crude oil produced at any given time.  I have always known this weakness as a result of my expertise in the oil industry and I have the requisite mechanism to stop this haemorrhage and tackle the menace of oil theft in Nigeria.”

To address the pilfering in the oil sector, the ADP chairman appealed to the federal government to ensure that modern technology was deployed like other oil-producing nations to counter the pilfering of crude at terminals.

“Considering the huge revenue losses and the current volatility in the price of crude oil in the international market, we use this opportunity to call on President Muhammadu Buhari not to hesitate to reach out to experts who can proffer viable solutions to this cankerworm ferociously eating deep into the nations revenue from the Oil and Gas sector which accounts for over 85% of the total revenue that flows into the federation account from where the Nigerian economy is funded.

“Nigeria should borrow a leaf from other oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirate (UAE), Russia, USA, Brazil, Iran, Iraq and others that have effectively managed their oil productions. Adequate management of the oil sector will boost economic growth and development of the country.”

In his critique of the 2020 budget, he advised Nigerians to brace up for tougher times ahead as he noted that there was nothing cheering in a budget in which projected expenditure was greater than revenue.

“In the 2020 budget estimate presented to the National Assembly this October, the Buhari government projected N10.33 trillion as expenditure while the projected revenue is N8.15 trillion leaving the nation yet again in deficit. The most disturbing is that the government will service debts with N2.45 trillion, which is higher than the N2.15 trillion earmarked for the capital project. Worse still about 70% of the budget will be used for recurrent expenditure.  “