A
total of 222,437,870 barrels of crude oil was unaccounted for by the Nigerian
government in the period between 2004 and 2014, a report by the watchdog ,
Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has revealed.
At
an average cost of $100 per barrel over the period, the country is estimated to
have lost a total sum of $22 .04 billion, owing to her inability to account for
the said volume of oil between 2004 and 2013.
This
revelation is coming on the heels of the
rejection by Austin Avuru ,
managing director of Seplat Petroleum
Nigeria, of claims made by multinational
oil companies on the volume of crude oil
lost to theft.
Avuru
said the independent oil producers
believe that the volume of crude oil
lost to theft daily, could not be more
than 20,000 barrels. He added that the big time operators in the country were
taking Nigeria for a ride, hence the outrageous figures they put forward as
stolen.
Zanaib
Ahmed, the NEITI executive secretary, who spoke at a management workshop, with the theme, “Fluid Accounting and
Metering Issues in the Nigerian Oil and Gas
industry” organised by the
Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationist (NAPE) said that the agency
is confronted with
different production figures, as
it gets
different figures from both
the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and oil companies.
Ahmed, who was represented by Tariye George,
general manager, Technical Services, however said efforts were currently being
made to reconcile areas where these differences existed.
She
further said crude oil losses also occurred through the meters at the
terminals, and therefore called on
government to pay urgent attention to the need to have functional meters at the
export terminals.
She
further said that the agency was doubtful about the figures of losses alleged
by oil companies, and expressed the opinion that it would be difficult for some
of the companies to sustain their businesses if the figures were factual.
She
stressed that good hydrocarbon measurement was hinged on three legs – fiscal
regime, metering infrastructure and regulation. “Crude oil production figures
from the producing entities need to be tied to the volume that passed through
available metering infrastructure for proper accountability,” she said.
Commenting
on the losses recorded either on account
of crude oil theft, or losses
through faulty metering in the industry in the last 10
years, Austin Avuru, said the
huge losses started in 2009 when third
party producers infiltrated the industry and that since that time,
the volume of crude lost has been on the increase.
Avuru
said even so, the independent oil
producers did not believe in the figures churned
out by multinational oil companies as being the volume of crude oil
lost on account of stealing.
“We
have tried to look at certain parameters and have concluded that the volume of
crude oil lost to oil theft is not more than 20,000 barrels per day”.
He
bemoaned the way some government
agencies have taken over the functions of DPR , observing that it was
only DPR that was empowered by law to give account of anything that has to do with
crude oil.
He
was of the view that for proper accounting for crude oil production, the fiscalisation
of the commodity should start from the flow
stations, and that operators must distinguish between stolen products
and lost ones.
Also
speaking, Ebi Omatsola, group managing
director of Conoil, warned that the government should not succumb
to the suggestion that
measurement of crude oil should be done at the wellhead, because the volume of
crude oil cannot be captured at that point.
Efforts of the Federal Government to fight
crude oil theft were said to have helped
to reduce the volume lost daily
by about 50 per cent, according
to Delta State governor, Emmanuel
Uduaghan, recently.
This
indicates that the country currently loses about $4 million (N640 million)
daily to crude oil thieves in the Niger Delta;
“There
has been a reduction in oil theft from about 80,000 barrels per day to the
current 40,000 barrels per day,” he said. “I can tell you that the crude that
is being stolen has reduced to about 40,000 barrels per day.”
The governor also admitted that despite the
reduction in crude theft, the current figure was still ‘too high.’
BusinessDay
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