Nigeria loses $54.7m daily, as NNPC claims 700,000 barrels of crude lost per day

About 700,00 barrels of crude oil are lost per day to oil theft in Nigeria, the Chief Upstream Investment Officer at the NNPC Upstream Investment Management Services (NUIMS), Bala Wunti, has disclosed.

The value of crude lost, when pegged to the current brent oil price as of the time of filing this report, was $54.7 million per day and $1.64 billion monthly, reflecting one of the reasons the earnings from oil trade declined in the third quarter 2022.

During an interview with Arise TV on Wednesday, Wunti explained that the production output in August was one million, falling short of the 1.88 million the country’s budget is anchored on.

This indicates a reduction of about 700,000 according to the NNPC official, who disclosed that crude oil could be lost to several factors such as; Actual losses to theft; Opportunity losses (a case of not producing to volume expected or capacity level; then Engineering losses, which is caused by engineering process.

Wunti linked the oil theft to insecurity in Niger Delta, “As I speak to you, Brass and Bonny are on force majeure, that is about 300,000 barrels deferred already.

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“We have been working hard with the private security contractor to return the Trans-Niger pipeline. Hopefully, we will open Bonny very soon.

“One of our major trunklines – the Nembe Creek trunkline cannot be used because of security vulnerabilities, although Trans Forcados, Escravos, and Trans-Remo are back.

“Now, the previous security architecture was not working, so, we carried out a robust diagnosis, which revealed major issues to be addressed.”

He disclosed that there was previously lack of coordination between security agencies, private security, industry regulator and host communities, but their recent cooperation has led to increase in output.

“Sometimes, we have to destroy a whole vessel. Removing these vessels is a big job. And we are recording significant success because of the improved security situation.

“We are now almost an average of 350,000 to 400,000 barrels increase.”

Wunti had previously stated that as of December 6, Nigeria’s crude oil output has increased to 1.59 million barrels per day.

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