The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, Mele Kyari, has disclosed that Nigeria lost almost 240,000 barrels of crude oil worth about $1.5 billion between January and March of 2022 as a result of crude oil thefts, vandalism and operation of illegal refineries in the country.
Kyari, who was briefing members of the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream), on Thursday in Abuja also said the activities of pipeline vandals and oil thieves has substantially decreased Nigeria’s oil production to about 1.49 million barrels per day (bpd).
While assuring that the NNPC, in conjunction with security agencies and other industry stakeholders are working round the clock to restore production, Kyari called for the establishment of special courts to handle cases of crude oil thefts, pipeline vandalism, and operation of illegal refineries in the country.
He expressed the hope that within the next two months, NNPC will be able to restore production to a substantial level.
The NNPC boss said at the moment, the country was not producing a single barrel of crude oil from the Bonny terminal since the two pipelines feeding the terminal had to be shut down due to vandalism.
He praised the action taken by Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike in dealing with owners and operators of illegal refineries, stressing that such action needed to be sustained by political leaders in the oil producing areas as a way of averting potential dangerous environment challenge.
He dismissed insinuations that activities of the vandals was as a result of the operation of the Petroleum Industry Act, saying “What is going on has nothing to do with the PIA. It is purely act of thieves, act of vandals which has rendered the industry unworkable and taken us to the level where today, our production is around 1.49 million barrels.”
He said, however, that the activities of the vandals have not substantially affected the production sharing agreement with oil companies because such production is located in the deep waters which is to easily accessible to vandals.
