The historic step taken by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) to launch an onslaught against oil theft which had ravaged oil production capacity is fast paying off as oil production has risen to 1.59 million barrels per day (bpd) in the first week of December from less than a million earlier.
Through the provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021, NNPC Ltd transited from the defunct Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to the new NNPC Limited and ready for increased profitability on behalf of the over 200 million Nigerians. However, this single quest has been hampered by massive oil theft, prompting the company to take a historic action.
In the later part of this year, the Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC Ltd, Malam Mele Kolo Kyari, launched the crude oil monitoring system and platform which, he said, is to enable citizens to contact the company on cases of suspected oil theft and vandalisation around oil communities.
Kyari said, illegal activities around oil assets including illegal refineries, insertion on oil pipelines, among others have caused a huge shortfall in oil production with the situation getting worse this year. Before the onslaught against the oil thieves, Nigeria was estimated to be losing over 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil; cutting production capacity to just 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd) from a 1.8m bpd quota assigned to Nigeria by OPEC.
One action from the NNPC Ltd was the engagement of a private surveillance firm, Tantita Security Services Nigeria Ltd managed by ex-agitator, Government Oweizide Ekpemupolo popularly called Tompolo, on August 13.
The firm, which has its base in the Niger Delta, worked with security operatives to comb the areas and to the surprise of Nigerians, massive discoveries of illegal activities were made.
It was revealed that over 68 vessels involved in crude oil theft have been arrested, while 638 illegal refineries out of 763 have been destroyed, as well as several arrests made.
Beside Tompolo’s company, two other contractors were engaged in executing the pipeline surveillance activities to ward off oil thieves.
“We have another contractor called Maton Engineering that is responsible for Brass and all the central areas and we have the pipeline infrastructure responsible for the East. So, there are three contractors based on the sectorisation of the region and each one of them is reporting.”
As the NNPC Ltd’s feat got credence from Nigerians, the perpetrators devised means to frustrate the scheme. The GCEO of NNPC had in November revealed alleged threat to his life over his role in curtailing the theft of oil running into trillions of naira in the country.
Speaking during a function in Abuja, Kyari said such threat would not dissuade him from embarking on the task of repositioning the oil and gas sector in the country as he justified the decision to engage the oil pipeline surveillance team to curtail the massive theft of oil in the country.
Kyari said: “The scale of oil theft that we have seen was not anticipated, not expected, not thought of. The scale is enormous. We have seen pipelines taken from our main trunk lines into abandoned platforms in which people come to steal oil.
“We have seen the thousands of illegal refineries that we have taken down in the last four to five months. We have seen up to 295 illegal connections to our pipelines and many of them have been there for years.
“Companies would stop injecting oil if they discover it can’t get to the terminals,” the NNPC boss explained.
On the implications of oil theft to the Nigerian economy, Kyari said: “From our records, before we recovered, we were losing 700,000bpd, translating to 21 million barrels per month, and if you consider an average price of this year at $90/barrel, that will translate to somewhere around $1.8bn or $1.9bn losses that we suffered.”
