The Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) Group, Mele Kyarihas corroborated United Bank of Africa President Tony Elumelu’s claim that Nigeria is losing 95 percent of oil production to thieves in beautiful terminalState of the Rivers.
Elumelu said in a Twitter thread on March 17 that Nigeria was losing 95 percent of production at the Bonny terminal due to vandals causing Shell to declare force majeure production activities at that field.
“Look at Bonny Terminal which should be receiving 200K barrels per day, but received less than 3,000 barrels, prompting operator @shell to declare force majeure,” Elumelu tweeted.
Mr. Elumelu’s claim was confirmed on Thursday by Mr. Kyari while appearing before the House Petroleum (Upstream) Committee.
The GMD told the panel that Nigeria can only get 3,000 barrels out of the 239,000 barrels injected into the pipeline from Bonny Terminal.
He also revealed that the country lost $4 billion due to theft at a rate of 200,000 barrels per day in 2021. He added that the country has already lost $1.5 billion so far in 2022 because vandalism has intensified.
“In fact, what is happening is massive acts of vandals and thieves in our pipes that have first caused us to lose our volume. Second, it forced us to shut down production. The difference between the current production of 1.49 million and our potential that we can easily do – about 1.8 million or so – independently is not necessarily stolen and is not within the reach of common vandals. What has been in great difficulty is the production of the independents and the JV. Unfortunately, except for ExxonMobil production, most of our JV is on land. This is where we have the challenge,” he said.
He said the rate of vandalism has forced the NNPC and its Joint Venture partners to close two production fields. He stressed that the NNPC had to abandon the lines because closing the gap will not deter oil vandals from stopping.
He said the situation has become “desperate.”
Speaking about the solution, Kyari said the theft goes beyond ordinary “hooligans” because the sophistication required goes beyond small-time hooligans.
In his PowerPoint presentation, Mr. Kyari showed the committee the environmental impact of the vandals’ activities.
He insisted on the environmental impact of the vandals’ activities and pointed out that the impact will be felt for generations to come.
He praised Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike for actions taken to rein in illegal refineries.
He asked the committee to give the government two months to implement some of the security measures developed to deal with vandal activities in the Niger Delta.
Reacting to the filing, Sergius Ogun (PDP, Edo) said that the committee should give the NNPC GMD the two months it requested, while Nicholas Ossai (PDP, Delta) made a motion for the committee to be dissolved in a closed session.
Consequently, the committee entered into a closed session with the GMD.