OIL THEFT: Speaker Abbas cries out, Nigeria loses Over N16trn Crude Oil btw 2009-2022
By Urube Peter, Abuja
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon Tajudeen Abbas has revealed that N16.25 trillion lost to crude oil theft between 2009 and 2020 in Nigeria.
Dr Abbas said this while inaugurating the ad-hoc committee to investigate crude oil theft and loss of revenue in Abuja on Thursday.
Represented by the Chairman, House Committee on Petroleum Upstream, Al-Hassan Ado-Doguwa, the speaker said if decisive action was not taken to address the issue, the country may be thrown into a deeper fiscal crisis.
He emphasized the menace of crude oil theft had hampered the growth of the country’s oil production, with the estimate of between five and 30 per cent of crude oil production lost daily.
According to the speaker, the dwindling revenue from the oil and gas sector has post great danger to the country economy.
Quoting data from the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Mr 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 “NEITI reports also show that 619 million barrels of crude valued at 46 billion dollars were stolen in the period 2009 to 2020″.
He reference the recent report and said, Nigeria’s OPEC quota was reduced from 1.742 million barrels per day to 1.38 million barrels per day.
“Yet, the country is still struggling to meet this quota as daily production output was 1.184 million barrels per day and 1.249 million barrels per day in May and June 2023 respectively.
“On the average, current daily production output is a far cry from the budget assumption of 1.69 million per day. The implication is the clear manifestation in our economic crisis that the country is facing.”
He said the nation had been facing a major fiscal crisis, adding that global recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine had continued to cast a cloud of uncertainty on the oil and gas industry.
On his part, the chairman of the Ad-hoc committee, Hon Al-hassan Runrum said the volume of losses occasioned by oil theft in the country and its associated impact on the economy was unacceptable.
Runrum said this would not be tolerated by any government, who truly loves its citizens.
He reiterated that such act of sabotage and breach on the nation’s security and sovereignty makes a caricature of the nation’s pride.
He said, “It is an affront on the government and its institutions, which must be tackled without further delay,” Runrum said.
The Adhoc chairman stressed, ‘the committee was determined to bring the ugly trend to an end otherwise there might be no future for “our children who have not yet “japed’’ to other countries in search of survival!
The representatives of various agencies of government and stakeholders gave their reports. Prominent among them were the Nigerians- Army, Navy, Air Force, DSS, Police and Civil Defence with some stated their efforts and promised to deploy more tartic to address the challenge. Other appealed to be allowed to return with report.
The forensic expert, Dr Alhassan who claimed to be have all it takes to monitor the pipelines was appreciated and asked to return the next day give more details about how to curb the ugly situation.
Meanwhile, In the strong submission of the two lawmakers from Rivers state, Hon Dum Dekor, representative of Gokana/Khana federal constituency who’s also the chairman house committee on Host communities, and Hon Awaji-Inombek Abiante, representative of Andoni-Opobo/Nkoro federal constituency and chairman, house committee on urban development and regional planning. They spoke one after another and were in total disagreement with the handlings of the situation in the region, moved a motion to summon all key agencies, particularly critical stakeholders in the oil and gas sector.
Like the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Ltd, NNPCL, Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, Ministry of Petroleum Resources, ministry of finance among others.
These failed to honour the invitation to appear before the committee are here by asked to unfailingly come on Friday 8th September by 10am
