$41.9bn worth of oil stolen from Nigeria – NEITI

The Nigeria Extractive Industries Initiative (NEITI) on Wednesday said crude oil and refined products worth $41.9 billion were stolen from Nigeria in the last 10 years.

NEITI, which urged the government to embrace oil fingerprinting technology, comprehensive metering infrastructure of all facilities and other creative strategies to combat the growing menace of theft of Nigeria’s crude oil and refined petroleum products, stated this in a policy brief it released in Abuja.

The brief showed that the country lost $38.5bn on crude theft alone, $1.56bn on domestic crude and another $1.8bn on refined petroleum products between 2009 and 2018.

NEITI also said that there was urgent need to curb oil theft in the country’s oil and gas industry, especially in the face of current dwindling revenues, so as to expand revenue generation.

The report further disclosed that Nigeria lost an average of $11m daily, which translated to $349m in a month and about $4.2bn annually to crude and product losses arising from stealing, process lapses and pipeline vandalism.

It said: “While figures from government put the loss at between 150,000 and 250,000 barrels per day, data from private studies estimated the figure to be between 200,000 and 400,000bpd.

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“This implies that Nigeria may be losing up to a fifth of its daily crude oil production to oil thieves and pipeline vandals.”

The report also indicated that what the country lost in 20 months in fiscal terms was enough to finance the proposed budget deficit for 2020, adding that what the nation lost in 15 months would be enough to cover the proposed borrowing or increased capital budget by 100 percent.

NEITI added: “In terms of volume, 138.000 barrels of crude oil was lost every day for the past 10 years, representing seven per cent of average production of two million bpd.

“Nigeria lost more than 505 million barrels of crude oil and 4.2 billion litres of petroleum products between 2009 and 2018.

“What is stolen, spilled or shut-in represents lost revenue, which ultimately translates to services that government cannot provide for citizens already in dire need of critical public goods.”

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