Comrade Usifo said Nigeria currently produce an average of 1.2 to 1.3 million barrels of crude oil daily from a capacity of about 2 million barrels
By Eberechi Obinagwam
The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, (PENGASSAN) has disclosed that from October 2021 to February 2022 that between 90- 99 percent of crude oil pumped into the Trans National Pipeline (TNP) by operators is vandalised.
The union stated this through it’s president, Comrade Festus Osifo recently in a press briefing.
Comrade Osifo said the issues of crude oil theft have been exacerbated in recent times which has made Nigeria lose out on accruing more revenue from the current high price of crude oil in the international market.
According to him, “We currently produce an average of 1.2 to 1.3 million barrels of crude oil daily from a capacity of about 2 million barrels of crude oil per day.
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“Reconciliation/Fiscalization at Bonny terminal shows that (only) 5- 10% of crude oil metered from the operators gets to the terminals,” Comrade Usifo said.
Pointing out more challenges, he said another problem arising from vandalism is that companies are forced to go into curtailment when these assets/export pipelines are damaged as they cannot export what they produce thereby incurring production losses.
“An operator loses an average of 10 days of production shut-in every month due to vandalism. Recently, preliminary work showed that about 150 illegal tappings were used in siphoning crude oil from the TNP. This has forced all operators injecting crude oil into the TNP to suspend export/injection thereby shutting in production. TOTAL Energies and SPDC for example stopped production into the TNP pipeline while Agip ENI declared majeure on their brass terminal,” he said.
The union stated that beyond the reduction in revenue to the operating companies and the country, this act of sabotage has caused serious environmental degradation to the host communities and region.
“The health implication of this unholy act will be monumental in years to come,” he said.
They, however, asked the federal government to work with stakeholders in the oil and gas industry as well as the national security architecture to find a lasting solution to this menace that is almost bringing the oil and gas industry to its knees.
“We expect that the integrity of the pipeline will be sound enough to enable safe transportation of crude and products all over the country, while Government establishes a special force committed to strict enforcement of Pipeline Right of Way. Pipeline installation can now be done using state-of-the-art technology in a manner that will be inaccessible to vandals.
“We expect that the managers of the pipelines imbibe the culture of regular maintenance while the government will live up to its responsibility of providing adequate security.
“Security agencies should be empowered to ensure regular surveillance of the pipelines to detect and prevent vandals action and there should be periodic movement of the personnel to discourage them from compromising the security of the assets,” Comrade Usifo said.
The union however called on the government to review the enabling legal instruments for sanctioning violators/defaulters.