Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas has disclosed that Nigeria lost N16.25 trillion to crude oil theft between 2009 and 2020.
The Speaker, who stated this while inaugurating the ad-hoc committee to investigate crude oil theft and loss of revenue in Abuja on Thursday, said the menace of crude oil theft had hampered the growth of the country’s oil production, with between five and 30 per cent of crude oil production lost daily.
He said that critical agencies in the oil and gas sector like the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Ltd, Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, Ministry of Petroleum Resources among others failed to honour the invitation.
Represented by the Chairman, 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. This, according to him, is due to dwindling revenue from the oil and gas sector.
Quoting data from the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Abbas said Nigeria’s oil production declined from 2.51 million barrels per day in 2005 to 1.77 million barrels per day in 2020. He added that Nigeria had continually failed to meet its daily production quota as set by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
According to him, 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.
Chairman of the ad-hoc committee, Al-hassa Runrum, said the volume of losses occasioned by oil theft in the country and its associated impact on the economy was unacceptable. He said this would not be tolerated by any government, who sincerely loves its citizens, adding that such acts of sabotage and breach on the nation’s security and sovereignty makes a caricature of the nation’s pride.
