House Speaker Tajudeen Abbas said Thursday that Nigeria lost 16.25 trillion naira from crude oil theft between 2009 and 2020.
The speaker affirmed this while inaugurating the ad hoc committee to investigate the theft of crude oil and loss of revenue in Abuja.
He said the threat of crude oil theft had hampered the growth of the country’s oil production, with between five and 30 percent of crude oil production lost daily.
He said that critical agencies in the oil and gas sector, such as the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Ltd, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission and the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, among others, did not honor the invitation.
Represented by the Chairman of the House Oil Committee, Al-Hassan Ado-Doguwa, the spokesman said that if decisive action is not taken to address the issue, the country could be thrown into a deeper fiscal crisis.
According to him, this is due to the decrease in income from the oil and gas sector.
Citing data from the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Abbas said Nigeria’s oil production declined from 2.51 million barrels per day in 2005 to 1.77 million barrels per day in 2020. .
He said that “NEITI reports also show that in the period 2009 to 2020, 619 million barrels of crude oil valued at $46 billion were stolen.”
He added that Nigeria had continuously missed its daily production quota set by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
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According to him, Nigeria’s quota in OPEC was recently reduced from 1.742 million barrels per day to 1.38 million barrels per day.
“However, the country is still struggling to meet this quota, as daily production was 1.184 million barrels per day and 1.249 million barrels per day in May and June 2023, respectively.
“On average, the current daily production is far from the budget assumption of 1.69 million per day. The involvement is clearly manifested in the economic crisis facing the country.
He said the nation had been facing a major fiscal crisis, adding that the global recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine had continued to cast a cloud of uncertainty over the oil and gas industry.
Al-hassa Runrum, chair of the ad hoc committee, said the volume of losses caused by oil theft in the country and its associated impact on the economy was unacceptable.
He said this would not be tolerated by any government that sincerely loves its citizens.
He added that such an act of sabotage and violation of the nation’s security and sovereignty constitutes a caricature of the nation’s pride.
“It is an affront to the government and its institutions, which must be addressed without further delay,” he said.
He said the committee was determined to put an end to this ugly trend, otherwise there would be no future for “our children who have not yet ‘jape’ to other countries in search of survival.”
(YAYA)