Reps condemns persistent destruction of oil, gas pipelines in Nigeria

The House of Representatives has expressed concern about the country’s ongoing destruction of oil and gas pipelines.

Rep. Alhassan Ado-Doguwa, Chairman of the Special Committee on Oil Theft, condemned the act during a meeting with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Ltd. in Abuja.

The engagement was to identify the root cause of oil theft in the country and potential solutions to combat the problem.

Ado-Doguwa stated that operating oil and gas pipelines in Nigeria posed a herculean challenge.

“It is saddening to note that these infractions do not stop with the pipelines, daily breaches are also recorded at the oil well heads, flow stations, loading, and export terminals, among others”, he said.

He expressed concern about the opacity and lack of transparency surrounding regulatory activities at the country’s crude oil export terminals.

“We are compiling the facts and figures. Instances, where approvals are hastily granted to vessels involved in crude theft just to cover official complicity, are reported.

“Incidents of undeclared liftings are noted, and all these and several other infractions, particularly in our offshore marine environment, contribute to the huge volume of crude oil theft being reported”, he added

Mele Kyari, Group Managing Director of NNPC Ltd., stated that over 9,000 pipeline infractions were recorded in a single year.

He stated that from 2022 to the present, the corporation deactivated 6,465 illegal refineries and removed 4,876 illegal pipeline connections out of 5,570 discovered.

“Some of the scale of the infraction that we see is unbelievable. We are not able to deal with it. When you remove one connection, the next day in the same location, someone will replace it.

“It is obvious that crude oil theft is almost an end-to-end issue in Nigeria; it is very obvious that everyone is involved.

“In most of these locations, they are less than a hundred meters from the settlement, some are even less than a hundred meters from the local government headquarters”, he said.

He observed that, despite the distance, evils were being perpetrated unabated, making it impossible to guarantee the production that would occur the following day.

He stated that the key issue had been security and that the NNPC had taken steps to reduce the threat of pipeline vandalism by combining all security agencies, including private security, into a single platform.

According to him, no country gives up the protection of such critical assets, which are our primary source of income, to non-state actors.

According to NAN, the Federal Government claims that more than N4.3 trillion in crude oil was stolen in 7,143 pipeline vandalism cases over five years.

According to the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), from 2017 to 2021, Nigeria recorded 7,143 cases of pipeline breakages and deliberate vandalism, resulting in crude theft and product losses of 208.639 million barrels valued at 12.74 million dollars (N4.325 trillion).

According to the NEITI reports, Nigeria spent N471.493 billion on pipeline repairs and maintenance during the same period.