Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Dr Emmanuel Kachikwu disclosed this in a statement at a one-day seminar on Security in the Gulf of Guinea, organised by the Gusau Institute on Tuesday in Abuja.
''Oil theft is a major issue for us,'' he said. '' We lose on average of about 50,000 barrels of oil. We lose about $3-$4 billion of revenue and that is just in terms of crude oil itself. When you get to pipelines, most of our pipelines are ruptured and attacked fairly frequently. A lot is happening. More challenges are going to be there but we are going to be able to solve the problems. We have given ourselves eight months within which we will hopefully completely eradicate the issue of oil theft in Nigeria. It is a focus that is very firm, very determined and in the process, you are going to find individuals who constitute some of the highest level of personnel in this economy. Oil theft is not just about the poor in the society. It is about the very rich and it takes a rich man to be able to get the market for the crude and enter into the carriage contract. It is the rich in the country that are actually the problem of NNPC and not the poor. We will address that very solidly, and we will achieve result for Nigeria. If we don’t do that we would have lost the essence of our appointment into this position. Working with security agencies, and using lots of technology we will ensure that this business stops. It is critical that the Nigerian face is not seen as a face of theft but a face of decency.''
Kachikwu said that between June 2014 and June 2015, the corporation recorded between 3,400 to 4,000 attacks on the various pipelines in the country. The effect is a shut-in of about 250,000 barrels a day and when you calculate that, you have a net loss of over $7 billion.
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