The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has stated that it has put together a number of computerized control systems to reduce the theft of crude oil which costs 470,000 barrels per day (BPD), particularly when it occurs in the oil-rich Niger Delta area.
It said that the loss had prevented it from meeting the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) output targets.
This results in a monthly loss of $700 million between March and September 2022.
Journalists in Abuja were informed of this by the group general manager of National Petroleum Investment Management Services, Bala Wunti who claimed that the pipelines, particularly those near the Bonny port, cannot be used because of criminal activity.
He said, “If you’re producing 30,000 barrels a day, every month, you get 1,940 barrels. So, what it means is that you can take it to 270 every four days, calculate it in a month; you will have seven cargos in a million barrels, that’s seven million barrels.”
“When you multiply seven million barrels by $100 that is $700m lost per month, about 150,000 barrels expected differ, we are not producing due to security challenges.
“The Shell Petroleum Development Company trunk line, TNP transnational pipeline cannot be operated and this has been like this since March 3rd that we put in this. Just take your calculator, 150,000, it means if you want to arrive at one million barrels per day, it means every week as a minimum, basically for one week alone, it’s four cargoes; and four cargoes is four million barrels.
The GGM said the impact of pipeline vandalism has caused low crude oil production, interrupted gas supply, countrywide interruption of distribution of petroleum products, refineries’ downtimes, and increasing instability in the oil and gas market.
“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, 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.”
On the company’s efforts to contain the menace, Wunti said the NNPCL was deploying technology in monitoring the illegal activities around its facilities in the creeks.
“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. The digital control system, it’s like you have the control system of all your assets in one place.”
