The Senate Adhoc Committee on Oil Theft has disclosed that said it had begun investigations into oil theft and illegal bunkering activities in the Niger Delta region. This is as Nigeria continues to lose N700 million monthly due to the criminal act.
Lamenting that the oil theft, which had seen the country lose huge earnings as well as hobbled her ability to meet the quota allocated by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), was worrisome, Chairman of the Committee, Bassey Akpan said the investigations were launched to put an end to this.
His words: “Our intention is to visit every oil terminal located in the Niger Delta region to see things for ourselves, the reason for oil theft, the reason for oil losses.
“We at the National Assembly believe that the local refining capacity as a result of all the bunkering issues can never be guaranteed or be sustained or be ensured by the losses.
“We believe that there are other areas where the country loses this huge revenue and resources. So it’s a serious job we are out here to do.”
How much oil is stolen in Nigeria?
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) had claimed to be recording 470,000 bpd of crude oil loses monthly, which amounts to $700 million.
In a statement in which this disclosure was made, Bala Wunti, the Group General Manager, National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPMS), according to the corporation, argued that the number of oil barrels stolen daily is very huge, adding that about 270 barrels per day that were supposed to be loaded in Bonny are no longer going to be loaded because of theft.
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 on a million barrels, that’s seven million barrels,” he said.
“When you multiply seven million barrels by $100 that is $700 million lost per month and about 150,000 barrels expected are differed; we are not producing due to security challenges,” the statement quoted him as saying.
