Nigeria lost N16.25 trillion to crude oil theft in 11 years

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas said on Thursday, September 7, that the country lost about $46 billion (N16.25 trillion) to crude oil theft between 2009 and 2020. THE NATION reports.

The speaker, who spoke while inaugurating the ad hoc committee to investigate crude oil theft and loss of revenue, said the menace of crude oil theft has drastically hampered the growth of the country’s oil production with between 5 and 30 percent of crude oil production lost every day.

He, however, expressed shock that critical agencies in the oil and gas sector such as the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited, Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, Ministry of Petroleum Resources among others failed to honour the invitation to the investigative hearing.

Read Other Top News:

Represented by the chairman of the 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 due to dwindling revenue from the oil and gas sector.

Quoting data from the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), the speaker said Nigeria’s oil production declined from 2.51 million barrels per day in 2005 to 1.77 million barrels per day in 2020.JAMB Portal

He said: “NEITI reports also show that 619 million barrels of crude valued at $46 billion were stolen in the period 2009-2020”, adding that “Nigeria has continually failed to meet its daily production quota as set by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).”

Abass said further that “recently, 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 average, current daily production output is a far cry from the budget assumption of 1.69 million per day. The implication is clearly manifest in the economic crisis that the country is facing.”InformationGuideNigeria

While saying that the nation faces a major fiscal crisis, the Speaker said that global recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine has continued to cast a cloud of uncertainty on the oil and gas industry in the country.JAMB Result

He noted: “While the average international price for Brent crude oil has hovered slightly above the set benchmark price since January, Nigeria’s daily oil production has performed poorly due to a number of reasons.NYSC Portal

“It is common knowledge that investment in the oil and gas sector has declined in the past few years owing to global financing constraints and the overall response to energy transition considerations.

“However, we must agree that the greatest challenge to optimizing crude oil production in Nigeria is the grand scale oil theft that has plagued the sector for the past 2 decades.

Check JAMB Result

Check and Confirm: How much is Dollar to Naira