As military impounds N4bn worth of crude from oil thieves
The speaker of the house of representatives, Mr Tajudeen Abbas said $46 billion (or N16.25 trillion) was lost to crude oil theft between 2009 and 2020.
He made the revelation yesterday in Abuja while inaugurating an ad hoc committee to investigate crude oil theft and loss of revenue in the country
The speaker who was represented by the chairman, house committee on petroleum upstream, Mr Alhassan Doguwa, said Nigeria loses between five and 30 per cent of its daily production due to the oil theft.
Quoting data from Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Abbas said oil production declined from 2.51 million barrels per day in 2005 to 1.77 million barrels per day in 2020.
“NEITI reports also show that 619 million barrels of crude valued at $46 billion were stolen in the period 2009-2020. Nigeria has continually failed to meet its daily production quota, as set by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC),” he said.
“Recently, Nigeria’s OPEC quota was reduced from 1.742 million barrels per day to 1.38 million barrels per day. Yet, the country is still struggling to meet this quota as daily production output was 1.184 million barrels per day and 1.249 million barrels per day in May and June 2023.
“On average, current daily production output is a far cry from the budget assumption of 1.69 million per day. The implication is clearly manifest in the economic crisis the country is facing.”
Abbas called for a decisive action to be taken otherwise the country would sink into a deeper fiscal crisis, given the dwindling revenue from the oil and gas sector.
Meanwhile, the defence headquarters said the Nigerian military impounded N4 billion worth of crude oil from oil thieves in operations across the Niger Delta region between June and August 2023.
Defence spokesman, Maj Gen Edward Buba said in a statement yesterday said, over 6.6 million litres of stolen crude oil; 3.5 million litres of AGO; 200,000 litres of DPK, and over 65,000 litres of petrol were recovered from oil thieves during the period.
Maj. Gen. Edward Buba disclosed this in Abuja during the quarterly briefing on the operations of the military across the country between June and August 2023.
“Troops operations in the South-South geopolitical zone resulted in the arrest of the following; 6,652,250 litres of stolen crude oil, 3,558,325 litres of illegally refined AGO, 288,650 litres of DPK, and 65,600 PMS. All amounting to an estimated sum of N4bn denied to the oil thieves, thus saving the nation from losing this money to economic saboteurs,” he stated.
