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Nigeria has lost 620 million barrels of crude oil valued at $46 billion between 2009 and 2020, the country’s top agency for ensuring transparency in the extractive sector said.
Oil theft in Africa’s biggest oil producer is sometimes associated with criminal gangs stealing crude from pipelines for local processing; however, the vast bulk of stolen crude is exported from the country in huge tankers.
The country also lost 4.2 billion litres of petroleum products from refineries valued at $1.84 billion from 2009 to 2018, the agency said.
“We are aware that oil theft is perpetrated mainly through pipeline clamping,” Ogbonnaya Orji, the Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), said in remarks posted on X.
Despite the losses, the sector accounted for 72% of total Nigerian exports and foreign exchange and 40% of government revenue, Orji said at the 2023 International Pipeline Technology and Security Conference in the capital Abuja.
Due to oil theft and losses caused by pipeline vandalism, blatant sabotage and general insecurity, the country has yet to reap the full benefits of its oil and gas resources, he added.
NEITI is a government agency that operates as part of a global EITI scheme aimed at improving transparency among commodity producing countries.
(Editing by Bindu Rai)
