The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) on Sunday disclosed Nigeria had been losing $700 million monthly to oil theft and vandalism at terminals in the upstream sub-sector of the nation’s hydrocarbon resources industry
The group general manager of the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), a corporate services unit in the upstream directorate of NNPCL, Mallam Bala Wunti, gave this hint during a tour of NNPCL facilities on Sunday.
According to him, the worsening insecurity in the upstream sub-sector is adversely affecting Nigeria’s oil production in some terminals.
For instance, the group general manager lamented that some pipelines, particularly those around the Bonny oil export terminal, had not been operational for some time due to the activities of oil thieves and pipeline vandals.
He explained: “When you multiply seven million barrels by $100 that is $700 million lost per month, adding that about 150,000 barrels expected are diverted, 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 the case since March the 3rd”, Wunti added.
This is even as he pointed out that Forcados oil export terminal was not totally secure due to some challenges while Brass oil export terminal, which is operated by Agip and produces about 100,000 barrels per day, was also facing insecurity and vandalism.
The group general manager, however, promised that the NNPCL management was committed to addressing the challenges.
The NAPIMS chief elaborated: “Illegal siphoning of crude oil from oil facilities by criminal individuals and groups impacted IP on revenue to all stakeholders,” he said.
“The impact of vandal activities caused low crude oil production, interrupted gas supply, countrywide interruption of distribution of petroleum products, refineries’ down times, increasing instability in the oil and gas market, but 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 and 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.
“I was in the Saudi Arabia infrastructure twice, and I know what they have. It’s a digital control system; it’s different from our own. 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.
“So we use a combination of technology to integrate and synchronize and create what we are now confident and comfortable with”, Wunti stressed.
