BY FESTUS OKOROMADU, ABUJA
Despite huge deployment of securities to the Niger Delta region in recent time, the country is still losing 200,000 barrels of crude oil to thieves daily.
The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mele Kyari, disclosed this when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Appropriations on Friday.
The company, according to him, has also discovered over 4,800 illegal connections from the country’s crude oil pipeline in the region, adding that within 100 kilometres of the pipeline there are over 300 insertions.
“We have two sets of losses, one coming from our products and the other coming from crude oil.
“In terms of crude losses, it is still going on. On the average, we are losing 200,000 barrels of crude every day,” he said.
Speaking further, Kyari said, “We have over 4,800 illegal connections on our pipelines. That means in some lines, within 100 kilometres of pipelines, you have as much as 300 insertions.
“Therefore, even when you produce the oil, you cannot deliver it at the required pressure and therefore the volume will also be less.”
Kyari told the committee that people troop in from other parts of the country to insert illegal connections on pipelines in the oil-producing Niger Delta region of Nigeria, stressing that crude oil theft in the Niger Delta region has reached calamity stage which is not attainable in any country of the world.
The NNPC limited boss emphasized that the situation is despite the engagement of state actors to protect critical assets as the last resort for a solution to a massive challenge that is termed abnormal and should not have happened in the first place.
He explained that when these insertions to the pipelines are continued for a long time and sealed up, they can no longer hold the pressure.
On subsidy removal, the Group CEO says if President Bola Tinubu did not remove the subsidy on petrol, NNPC would have been liquidated by the end of June.
He said monies were taken from other cash flows and sources to fund subsidies in the past for its sustenance and would have resorted to more borrowing to sustain the subsidy regime as its cash flow could no longer carry the burden of fuel subsidy.
He also said the country does not have credible data on national consumption, because there is no infrastructure to get the accurate figure.
The NNPCL boss in his submissions before the committee said the oil component of the 2024 budgetary projections are realistic and realisable despite the fact that the country presently produces an average of 1.5 million barrels of oil per day.
When asked by the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Adeola Olamilekan, if the projected oil production per day can be jacked up to 1.8 million from 1.78 million, he said the projections and parameters set in the proposed budget are accurate for NNPCL and realisable.
