The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, on Thursday, July 21, said Nigeria lost about N51.3 billion to crude oil theft in 2015.
The newly appointed Group Managing Director of the state-run oil firm, Dr. Maikanti Baru, made the disclosure when he led a delegation of NNPC top management on a courtesy call to the Chief of Defence Staff, General Gabriel Olonishakin, at the Defence Headquarters, Abuja.
Baru who went to appeal to the Nigerian military to help secure critical oil and gas infrastructure and curb losses incurred by the Corporation due to the nefarious activities of pipeline vandals and oil thieves, said revenue loss was due to the activities of pipeline vandals.
He added that over 3000 vandalism incidents were recorded every year from 2010-2015, while in 2015 alone, pipeline losses of petrol volume of over 643 million litres were incurred.
The NNPC GMD said:‘‘From January to May this year, almost 1,447 cases of pipeline hacking were recorded, resulting to a loss of 109 million litres of petrol and 560,000 barrels of crude oil to refineries, posing a great threat to the nation’s economy and the 2016 federal budget.
“The 2016 budget plan was based on 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil production. However, the budget plan is now grossly impacted due to renewed militancy with about 700,000bpd of oil production curtailed due to pipeline vandalism,’’ he said.
He noted that domestic natural gas supply to power is equally impacted with an estimated drop of about 50 per cent from 1400 million standard cubic feet of gas per day (mmscfd) to barely 700mmscfd resulting to significant power outage exposure of between 2500MW to 3000 MW as a result of direct and indirect impact.
