Oil theft: Nigeria lost 22 million barrels in six months —NNPC

NIGERIA lost as much as 22 million barrels of oil to theft in the first half of this year, a problem that is a threat to the country’s economy, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said.

NNPC spokesman, Ndu Ughamadu, said the government was looking at the problem, but did not specify what actions were expected to combat it.

The stolen oil amounts to more than 120,000 barrels per day (bpd), or roughly six per cent of Nigeria’s nearly two million bpd output.

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Oil accounts bring in 90 per cent of Nigeria’s foreign exchange and the bulk of government revenue. But the oil pipelines that snake through the swampy, oil-rich Niger Delta are targets for theft and sabotage.

The governor of Edo State and chairman of the ad-hoc Committee of the National Economic Council on Crude Oil Theft, Prevention and Control, Godwin Obaseki, said the 22 million barrel figure could double by the end of the year if nothing was done to combat theft.

In its June monthly report, the NNPC said there was a 77 per cent rise in oil pipeline vandalism. That report noted 106 pipeline breaches in June, up from just 60 in May.

Many of the breaches are points where thieves can off siphon oil and either sell it illegally or refine it in so-called artisanal refineries that are often little more than drums boiling oil into rudimentary fuels.