Sopuruchi Onwuka
The Nigerian petroleum industry is gradually pushing up its hydrocarbon liquids production after government and security agencies began collaboration with private community based security agencies to arrest massive stealing from flowlines.
Group Chief Executive of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, Mallam Mele Kyari, stated at the Practical Nigerian Content Forum hosted by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) that the industry must and will take back its pipelines from thieving vandals in the production environment.
Mallam Kyari stated that outcomes from the collaborations forged by the NNPC have already started yielding production recovery after key leakages have been plugged and security surveillance has been mounted on the flow conduits.
The Oracle Today reports that the national oil company had declared falling production and and inability to make any significant revenue remittances to the federation account due to industrial scale stealing in the upstream end of the industry.
And following a spate of public outcry against massive production losses in the industry, the NNPC Limited and other agencies in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources scaled up security surveillance on the nation’s production infrastructure, leading to engagement of private security outfits that discovered diversion pipelines that fed illegal export.
Subsequently, the Nigerian Navy gave a hot chase to Mt Heroic Idun, an ocean going tanker that sailed up to the Akpo deepwater production hub with intention of loading hydrocarbon liquids for suspicious export.
In lamenting the impact of crude thieves on the Nigerian petroleum industry operations, Mallam Kyari said that production from the oilfields had gone below the million barrel per day threshold, making the country unable to respond to production calls from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) where it is an eminent member.
Nigeria has since lost its leading position as Africa’s biggest oil producer and exporter as production losses increased and export volumes declined, yielding the position to Angola.
At PNC 2022 hosted in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Mallam Kyari told industry delegates that production has recovered from less than 1.0 million barrels per day to about 1.5 million barrels per day. He pointed out that the country is on the way to full capacity recovery as security of the operating environment continues to improve.
He noted that the price crash of 2020 during the global prices destruction following lockdowns and when thieves lost lucre on industry disruption showed that Nigeria could promptly pump significant 2.5 million barrels per day without bringing new fields online.
Mallam Kyari said that surging production to 2.5 mbd would come at massive barging cost of $21 per barrel due to pipeline outages. He added that efforts are ongoing to recover the massively perforated industry flowlines and restore efficiency of production.
“The industry must take back its pipelines from vandals,” he declared to conference delegates.
