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<\/p>\nIn a Policy Brief titled \u201cStemming the Increasing Cost of oil theft in Nigeria\u201d released in Abuja at the weekend, NEITI revealed how crude oil and refined products worth $41.9 billion were stolen from Nigeria in the last ten years.<\/p>\n
A breakdown shows that the nation lost $38.5billion on crude theft alone, $1.56billion on domestic crude and another $1.8billion on refined petroleum products between 2009 and 2018.<\/p>\n
The agency expressed concerns that in the face of current dwindling revenues, paying priority attention to curb oil theft in the country\u2019s oil and gas industry has become both necessary and urgent to expand revenue generation.<\/p>\n
The NEITI report further disclosed that Nigeria loses an average of $11million daily which translates to $349 Million in a month and about $4.2Billion annually to crude and product losses arising from stealing, process lapses and pipeline vandalism.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile figures from government put the loss at between 150,000-250,000 bpd, data from private studies estimate the figure to be between 200,000-400,000 BPD.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis implies that Nigeria may be losing up to a fifth of its daily crude oil production to oil thieves and pipeline vandals\u201d, the report said.<\/p>\n
On comparative analysis of the size and implications of the losses to the country\u2019s current dwindling revenue profile, NEITI renewed its appeal to the government to curb oil theft to reduce budget deficits and external borrowing.<\/p>\n
The transparency agency stated that the value of crude oil and allied products so far lost are equal to the size of Nigeria\u2019s entire foreign reserves. \u201cStemming this haemorrhage and leakages should be an urgent priority for Nigeria at a time of dwindling revenues and increasing needs\u201d, the report stressed.<\/p>\n
According to the NEITI report, what the country lost in 20 months in fiscal terms is \u201cEnough to finance the proposed budget deficit for 2020; in 15 months to cover total proposed borrowing or increase capital budget by 100% and in five months to cover pensions, gratuities and retirees\u2019 benefits for 2020\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of volume, 138.000 barrels of crude oil were lost every day for the past 10 years, representing 7% of the 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 2009-2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is stolen, spilt 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\u201d.<\/p>\n
The report further identified other effects of oil theft to the nation to include: pipeline vandalism, criminal sabotage, illegal refineries in oil-producing communities, which threatens the safety and livelihoods of the environment where these illegal refineries operate.<\/p>\n
The report also called for a forensic investigation into the activities of syndicates operating in the oil and gas industry, given the increasing rate of stealing and sophistication of the illicit trade.<\/p>\n
\u201cCuriously, the volume of losses does not particularly reflect the rate of pipeline breaks for the corresponding years, suggesting either that the criminals are becoming more efficient, or crude theft is occurring increasingly elsewhere. This may require further probing, it noted.<\/p>\n
NEITI suggested that government should reconstitute a special security task team for Nigeria\u2019s oil and gas assets, with a specific mandate to minimise crude theft and vandalism.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis task team should include oil companies and technical expertise in relevant fields. Command and control responsibility should be manned by professional intelligence personnel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key mode of operation should be based on seamless communication to improve response time. The command and control should have direct real-time access to information produced by the leak detection and localisation systems installed and operated by the oil companies,\u201d NEITI added.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has urged the federal 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\u2019s crude oil and refined petroleum products. In a Policy Brief titled \u201cStemming the Increasing Cost of oil theft in Nigeria\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":174350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[2658,6997],"class_list":["post-174349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-a","tag-neiti"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=174349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/174350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=174349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=174349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=174349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}