By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The Federal Government of Nigeria says the activities of vandals and thieves have posed a major challenge on why the country’s revenue from oil and gas has witnessed a steady downfall amidst the nation’s rising debt profile hitting N77 trillion.
This comes as foreign exchange scarcity from the oil sector, in addition to other economic indicators have widened the disparity between the local currency, the naira and other major currencies, even as the rate of poverty continues to skyrocket in the West African country.
The Nigerian Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva in a press statement insisted that the government was determined to end the trend through improved investments and security of oil facilities in the Niger Delta region of the country housing the installations.
The Minister while denying that 40 per cent of the volumes of crude losses did not come from measurement inaccuracies as claimed in the public, he said the major sources of crude oil losses have primarily been theft, pipeline vandalism and production deferment as a result of pipeline non-availability.
“It is a known fact that the major losses of crude oil in the country have been through theft and destruction of oil pipelines. Again we also know that some of the oil infrastructure are old and decayed and cannot perform at maximum capacity. And there is also the issue of lack of investments in fossil fuel in the country and the drive towards renewable energy has really hampered new investments in this sector,” he said.
Sylva said the government has put measures in place to restore sanity in the sector adding that contrary to the report, the problem associated with crude oil losses are systemic issues that the government was already handling with a view to finding permanent solutions to.
He appealed to the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and the Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) to harmoniously work together to ensure that the constraints and impending challenges in the optimal crude oil production volume were speedily addressed to boost national revenue.
According to him, the Federal Government cannot continue to lose revenue through perceived lapses in crude oil production, especially at this very critical period of scarce revenue for the nation emphasizing that this was not the time to dwell on the mistakes of the past or engaged in needless blame games but a time to work to close all existing leakages to enable government to get maximum benefits from its crude oil and gas assets.
While expressing satisfaction at the improved security along the major oil pipelines in the region, Sylva called for sustained efforts by all concerned to maintain maximum crude oil production.
“We are very confident that Nigeria will achieve a two-million barrel per day crude oil production target very soon. The government is doing everything possible to get to where we should be and everyone is working hard to achieve this,” the Minister said.
