Crude oil and refined products worth $41.9bn were stolen from
Nigeria in the last 10 years, the Nigeria Extractive Industries
Initiative has said.
NEITI also urged the government to embrace oil fingerprinting
technology, comprehensive metering infrastructure of all facilities
and other creative strategies to combat the growing menace of theft
of Nigeria’s crude oil and refined petroleum products.
It said these in a policy brief released in Abuja on
Wednesday.
A breakdown by the organisation showed that the nation lost
$38.5bn on crude theft alone, $1.56bn on domestic crude and another
$1.8bn on refined petroleum products between 2009 and 2018.
NEITI expressed concerns that in the face of current dwindling
revenues, paying priority attention to curb oil theft in the
country’s oil and gas industry had become both necessary and urgent
to expand revenue generation.
The report further disclosed that Nigeria lost an average of
$11m daily, which translated to $349m in a month and about $4.2bn
annually to crude and product losses arising from stealing, process
lapses and pipeline vandalism.
It said, “While figures from government put the loss at between
150,000 and 250,000 barrels per day, data from private studies
estimated the figure to be between 200,000 and 400,000bpd.
“This implies that Nigeria may be losing up to a fifth of its
daily crude oil production to oil thieves and pipeline
vandals.”
On comparative analysis of the size and implication of the
losses to the country’s current dwindling revenue profile, NEITI
renewed its appeal to the government to curb oil theft to reduce
budget deficits and external borrowing.
The transparency agency stated that the value of crude oil and
allied products so far lost was equal to the size of Nigeria’s
entire foreign reserves.
“Stemming this haemorrhage and leakages should be an urgent
priority for Nigeria at a time of dwindling revenues and increasing
needs,” the report stated.
According to the NEITI report, what the country lost in 20
months in fiscal terms was enough to finance the proposed budget
deficit for 2020.
It said that what the nation lost in 15 months would be enough
to cover total the proposed borrowing or increased capital budget
by 100 per cent.
NEITI added “In terms of volume, 138.000 barrels of crude oil
was lost every day for the past 10 years, representing seven per
cent of average production of two million bpd.
“Nigeria lost more than 505 million barrels of crude oil and 4.2
billion litres of petroleum products between 2009 and 2018.
“What is stolen, spilled or shut-in represents lost revenue,
which ultimately translates to services that government cannot
provide for citizens already in dire need of critical public
goods.”
The report further identified other effects of oil theft to the
nation to include pipeline vandalism, criminal sabotage and illegal
refineries in oil producing communities.
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