Oil theft: 6,465 illegal refineries destroyed since 2022

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited on Wednesday said it has deactivated about 6,465 illegal refineries in a bid to address cases of illegal crude oil theft in the country.

The Group Chief Executive Officer, NNPCL, Mele Kyari, disclosed this at the company’s corporate headquarters in Abuja while hosting members of the House of Representatives Special Committee on Oil Theft who were at the NNPCL towers on an oversight duty.

He said, “From 2022 to date, we have deactivated 6,465 illegal refineries. We have also removed 4,876 illegal connections to pipelines out of the 5,570 that we have discovered.”

Kyari added that the NNPCL is not sure of the actual number, stressing that the company was aware of scores of illegal connections yet to be removed.

“Some of the scale of infractions that we see is unbelievable; we are not able to deal with them. When you remove one connection, the next day in the same location, someone will replace it. It is obvious that crude oil theft is almost an end-to-end issue in Nigeria and it is very obvious that everyone is involved.

“In most of these locations, they are less than a hundred metres from settlements; some are even less than a hundred metres from local government headquarters,” he said.

The attacks on pipelines, according to the NNPCL boss, makes it difficult to guarantee production quantum the next day.

He said, “It is very obvious that despite all the integrity issues with our pipeline and our facilities, we have capacity beyond two million barrels per day without doing anything.

“But today, we are struggling to meet the budget estimate of 1.6 million barrels per day. The core issue here. No one will produce oil, knowing fully well that he cannot dispose of it, and that’s why no one is putting money into it.

“In 2022, it became so obvious that if something dramatic was not done, we were going to run into trouble. On a specific date, our production came down to as low as 1.1 million barrels per day. And on a particular date, we went below a million barrels.

In his remarks, the Chairman of the Special Committee, Alhassan Ado-Doguwa, said it has been established that operating oil and gas pipelines in Nigeria remained a huge task.

He said, “There is hardly a week or even a few days without an infraction or damage to an oil and/or gas pipeline in the country,” adding that the infractions also affect oil well heads, flow stations, loading, and export terminals, among others.

He lamented what he called the opacity and non-transparency of regulatory activities at the nation’s crude oil export terminals, saying, “We are compiling the facts and figures. Instances where approvals are hastily granted to vessels involved in crude theft just to cover official complicity are reported.

“Incidences of undeclared liftings are noted, and all these and several other infractions, particularly in our offshore marine environment, contribute to the huge volume of crude oil theft being reported.”