Mele Kyari, the Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, has revealed that oil vandals have forced the country to halt production at a number of locations.
Mr Kyari revealed that the country lost a minimum of 200,000 barrels per day to oil theft, forcing numerous terminals to shut down operations. The worth of oil stolen in 2021, according to the GMD, is estimated to be $4 billion.
He added that vandalism has increased to an average of 250,000 per day in 2022, implying that the government is losing $1.5 billion per day to oil theft at an average price of $100 per barrel.
These were revealed by the GMD during his appearance before the House Committee on Petroleum on Thursday (Upstream). The committee is looking into oil theft in the area.
Theft and vandalism have reached a point where we must shut down the global pipeline and declare force majeure. As well as the NCTL pipeline, which has forced us to declare force majeure on Bonny. As of right now, there is no production into the TMK or the NCTL because the activities can no longer be sustained.
“This isn’t because we don’t go back and replace the pipelines that have been tapped; we do so because vandals have repeatedly inserted themselves into these pipelines.” It got to the point where, instead of injecting 239,000 barrels per day, we could only receive 3,000 per day at the Bonny terminal.
There’s absolutely no incentive for anyone to keep going.
“Yes, it reached to the point where we could only get 3,000 barrels per day, and we shut operations.”
“There are obvious consequences when you lose up to 200,000 per day, even at an average of $65 per day, we lost close to $4 billion in value between January and December 2021.” At current prices of $100 per barrel, the losses have risen to almost 250,000 per day in January 2022. “We have lost close to N1.5 billion each day in this short period,” he said.
Mr Kyari’s statement comes after Tony Elumelu, the Chairman of the United Bank of Africa, made a claim and EA Adeboye, the General Overseer of the Redeem Christian Church of God, made a response.