Nigeria lost $376.5m to militants attacks on gas facilities in 3 months –NNPC 

At least $376.5bn was lost as a result of militants’ attacks on gas facilities in Nigeria between June and September 2016.

This resulted from a 45 per cent drop in production of the Joint Venture assets and the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NNPC) within the period.

The NNPC latest monthly report, which disclosed this, stated that about 139.58 billion standard cubic feet (scf) of gas produced by JV assets and 17.70 billion scf by the NPDC in July, went down from 173.8 billion scf and 24.4 billion scf for January up till May 2016. 

Current international market price of natural gas is $2.95 per 1,000 scf, while the crisis has made Nigeria to lose $125.5m per month.

According to the report, though NPDC’s gas later suffered a low production record of 388.7 million scf per day in April, it later rose to 571.12 million scf in May, but started going down from June when activities of the militants became intense.

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It was gathered that a total of 211.93 billion scf of natural gas produced in July was less, by almost half, the number projected for the period due to the same factor.

Ripples Nigeria also learnt that between 50 to 80 per cent of traditional onshore and shallow water oil production, which yields the highest government revenue per barrel, has been shut down over the past half year. 

The bulk of the oil produced over the period of hostility comes from the deep offshore, which yields significantly less revenue due to cost of production.

An NNPC official put it this way: “If nothing urgently is done to curb the activities of the militants, oil and gas production in Nigeria will suffer more than 70 per cent loss in a couple of months at the detriment of the economy.”

He confirmed that the effect of the militancy in the Niger Delta region has been turning away foreign investors as it has also affected contractors, service providers, banks and business partners, resulting in severe job losses, and shortfall in projected revenue with its attendant economic recession in the past one year.

By Emma Eke….