Obaseki Laments Oil Theft Losses, Urges FG to Take over Trunk Lines from IOCs
Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, has decried
Nigerian huge losses to oil theft, calling on the federal government to temporarily take over the trunk lines operated by international
oil companies
(IOCs),from where most of the breaches reportedly
occur.
He regretted that in spite of oil theft with the
attendant huge revenue losses, pipelines vandalism and the
associated environmental degradation, no one has been held accountable.
Speaking in
Abuja on Tuesday at the inaugural policy dialogue organised by the Nigeria Extractive Industries
Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Obaseki , who chairs a committee set up by
the National
Economic Council (NEC) to explore a workable
solution to the challenge of oil theft in the country, revealed that 22 million
barrels of oil valued at $1.35 billion were lost to thieves in the
first six months
of this year.
Most of the crude oil losses, he said, were
recorded on trunk lines operated by companies which own production fields
and the pipelines, a situation he described as disturbing.
Noting that the trunk lines outsourced to third
parties recorded the least breeches, he called on the federal government to temporary take over the trunk lines operated by the IOCs.
Obaseki stated: “Some of our key findings, for the
first half of this year, we lost 22.6 million barrels of crude oil at
an estimated cost of about $1.3 billion but these losses occurred
specifically in the
Nembe trunk line, we lost 9.2 million barrels; in
the Trans Niger pipeline we lost 8.6 million barrels; and in the
Trans Forcados
pipeline 3.9 barrels.
“What is
interesting is that the largest losses came from lines that were owned and operated by the same companies who
explored, who had production and owned the transportation of the
lines recorded those
losses.
“We also noticed that the lines that were
outsourced to third parties recorded the least losses so there is a very
interesting correlation between the ownership production into the lines and
the level of
losses on those lines.”
Nigeria was recently reported to have lost about
$41.9 billion through
oil theft
and pipeline vandalism in ten years, with the attendant impact on revenue and
environmental degradation.
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