The Federal Government stated on Monday that its newest results found that about 1.2 million barrels of crude oil were constantly shut in by producers across various oil wells in the Niger Delta owing to the industry’s rampant oil theft.
According to current data, the volume of oil lost to theft in Nigeria is around 100,000 barrels per day, equating to an estimated three million barrels per month. At a press conference in Abuja, the government revealed through the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission that the country’s gas reserves had increased to 208 trillion standard cubic feet.
“One of the negative and side effects of crude oil theft is that it has incentivised well shut-ins by producers, in the sense that it is not part of their investment model to produce and hand over to thieves,” the Chief Executive, NUPRC, Gbenga Komolafe, stated.
He added, “So what we have done is that we are engaging with all operators and the target is for us to have clarity around their operations, whereby we try to drill down on their work programmes and visibility, based on what we are expecting from them.
“In that regard, we had to set up an operations committee with the aim of identifying shut-in wells. The essence is for us to be able to have feasibility around the wells that are shut-in.
“That exercise was done and we found out that we have about 1.2 million barrels of oil that is shut in consistently as a result of the impact of crude oil theft. So, our engagement is aimed at identifying the wells that could be re-streamed in a manner that we could have some barrels added to our existing production.”
Komolafe stated that based on NUPRC’s target of getting about 40 to 50 per cent of the shut-in volumes, the government would be able to add about 500,000 barrels to what the country was currently producing.
“So, our projection is that we can hit over two million barrels and surpass our OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) quota,” he stated.
He stated that based on NUPRC’s engagements with investors in the sector, the commission observed that the oil firms were still willing to restart production in the shut-in wells despite the transition to renewable energy.
