Over 5,000 kilometres of pipelines damaged by vandals, NNPCL discloses

Mele Kyari, the CEO of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), has expressed regret over the negative impact vandals’ actions are having on the company’s operations.

He claimed that they have damaged more than 5,000 km of oil pipelines throughout the nation.

Kyari made this statement on Tuesday at a discussion with senators on the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream) in Abuja.

He, however, assured Nigerians that the nation’s four oil refineries would be made functional very soon.

According to Kyari, oil pipeline vandalism has been a major challenge facing the sector over several decades noting that the company had been unable to pump oil through pipelines from Warri to Benin within the last 22 years.

Kyari said, “Over 5,000 kilometres of oil pipelines in the country are not working. As a result of pipeline vandalism, 10 million litres of oil were lost from the volume pumped from Aba to Enugu at a time.

READ ALSO:Nigeria records 172 crude oil theft incidents, detects 67 illegal refineries in one week —NNPCL

“The company has been unable to pump oil from Warri to Benin within the last 22 years and cannot connect to Ore.

“There is no amount of security measures that had not been taken to curb the crime without success, which to us in NNPCL, is substantially a national calamity.”

He, however, said as a way out, the company is embarking on massive replacement of the pipelines which aside from being vandalised, are old and obsolete.

Kyari further explained that the deregulation of the oil sector and in particular, subsidy removal, which was carried out in May 2023, has turned NNPCL into a profitable company.

He maintained that before deregulation in 2018, the company posted a loss of N802 billion but after deregulation in 2021, it recorded an excess profit of N687 billion.

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