Crude Oil Theft: NNPC Reveals Actual Figures, Gives Reasons

According to Bala Wunti, the Chief Upstream Investment Officer at the NNPC Upstream Investment Management Services (NUIMS), the actual daily loss from crude oil theft in Nigeria is 700,000 barrels.

He disclosed this earlier today during an interview on Arise TV’s the Morning Show.

Wunti recognized that there are many estimates of Nigeria’s losses due to crude oil theft before explaining how the NNPC arrived at their estimate.

According to him, Nigeria’s budget is anchored on 1.88 million barrels per day of crude oil production. In August, Nigeria’s reported production output was 1 million barrels. Therefore, the difference is what the country is losing which is 700,000 barrels per day.

Note that the discrepancies in oil losses could be due to opportunity losses. This is why speculative figures are quoted as losses associated with crude oil theft.

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Wunti also spoke about how the security vulnerabilities in the Niger Delta have impacted crude oil production. He said:

“As I speak to you, Brass and Bonny are on force majeure, that is about 300,000 barrels deferred already. We have been working hard with the private security contractor to return the Trans-Niger pipeline. Hopefully, we will open Bonny very soon. One of our major trunklines – the Nembe Creek trunkline cannot be used because of security vulnerabilities, although Trans Forcados, Escravos, and Trans-Remo are back. Now, the previous security architecture was not working, so, we carried out a robust diagnosis, which revealed major issues to be addressed.”

Addressing other possible reasons, Wunti claims that Nigeria’s geological terrain is the problem. End-to-end visibility is therefore unattainable, especially in the marine economic zone.

He continued by saying that the blue water’s appearance had nothing to do with the brown water or the blackwater. As a result, desegregated visibility is diverse.

Furthermore, Wunti discussed the lack of cooperation among the sector’s participants, including the regulators, security services, local governments, and private security companies.