The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has disclosed that it loses 470,000 barrels per day of crude oil worth $700 million monthly to theft.
This was even as it stated that security challenges have in turn affected oil production especially pipelines around Bonny terminal.
Group General Manager, National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPMS), Bala Wunti made the disclosure during a tour of the facilities of the NNPCL.
According to him, about 270 barrels that were supposed to be loaded in Bonny were no longer feasible due to theft.
He explained that the illegal siphoning of crude oil from oil facilities by criminal individuals and groups, impacted negatively on revenue to all stakeholders, adding that the quantity of oil delivered to federal oil terminals in the country has been limited by the activities of pipeline vandals.
“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.
“When you multiply seven million barrels by $100 that is $700 million lost per month, adding that about 150,000 barrels expected are deferred, we are not producing due to security challenges.
“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,” he stated.
He said the impact of vandal activities caused low crude oil production, interrupted gas supply, countrywide interruption of distribution of petroleum products, refineries’ downtimes, increasing instability in the oil and gas market.
“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. I think the Bonny trunk line ranks highest.
ALSO READ FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
“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.”
On the use of technology to monitor illegal activities around the oil facilities in the creeks, he said, “I was in the Saudi Arabia infrastructure twice, and I know what they have. It is a digital control system; it’s different from our own. A digital control system, it’s like you have the control system of all your assets in one place.
“This is beyond the digital control system; it’s also a security system and we are doing it and to tell you that this was built-in by our in-house software engineers because of the security sensitivities to it because they are customized, the moment you give to somebody who creates that. So we use a combination of technology to integrate and synchronize and create what we are now confident and comfortable with.”
and then