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Fight oil theft to standstill – Group urges FG

By on August 10, 2015

A non-governmental organisation, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) has urged the federal government to fight the problem of oil theft to a final stop.

The call is coming against the background that Nigeria is among the countries with the highest incidents of crude oil theft in the world.

According to reports, Nigeria loses to crude theft about N272 billion per month, representing 7.7 per cent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

According to CISLAC in a statement signed by its Executive Director, Auwal Ibrahim Musa, “as a stakeholder concerned in promoting transparency and accountability in the sector to ensure that these non renewable resources benefit the lives of all citizens, we feel a need to speak and place on record our concerns, expectations and suggestions for achieving progress.

“Even though this menace predates this administration, its effects are nonetheless even more grievious. So serious is this problem that stakeholders are unable to determine either the volumes of crude stolen or the magnitude of the financial loss to the nation.

“The Chairman of Shell Companies in Nigeria puts the estimates at about $6 Billion loss annually in 2014. The immediate past Finance Minister in 2013, indicated a volume of over 300,000 bpd and a financial loss of some $12 billion annually, corroborating the figures of survey conducted by the Global Financial Integrity at the instance of the Central Bank of Nigeria in the same year.

“The immediate past Minister for Petroleum Resources estimated that Nigeria lost N1.29 trillion to industrial scale theft of crude oil and production shutdown last year in 2014. PENGASSAN puts the estimates at $25 million daily. The inability of stakeholders to agree on the volumes is in itself a problem resulting from the absence of metering facilities which needs to be addressed.”

But in spite of the numerous committees set up by the previous administration, Rafsanjani said the problem had escalated.

CISLAC called for complete restructuring of the NNPC and urged the federal government to regulate Domestic Crude Allocation to be strictly limited to the refining capacity of the refinery and treating the rest as crude for export; and to direct the stoppage of all existing offshore processing agreements and institute a competitive and open process and employ the more universally practiced format of refined product exchange agreements.

 

[ThisDay]