Nigeria Says Its Losing 180,000 Barrels Daily To Oil Thieves

A view of an illegal oil refinery is seen along the Awoba creek outside the oil hub city Port Harcourt in Nigeria's Delta region May 16, 2012. Nigeria is Africa's largest crude oil exporter but its production capacity has been slashed by thieves drilling into pipelines passing through winding creeks and waterways in the vast delta. The underground industry is thought to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Photograph by: REUTERS/Akintunde Akinleye

Nigeria loses 180,000 barrels of oil per day to theft, the head of the state oil firm said Thursday, while calling on lawmakers to help eliminate the scourge in Africa’s largest producer.

Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) chief Austen Oniwon said that the amount of oil stolen in Nigeria every day tops what neighbouring Ghana needs to meet its energy requirements.

"We lose almost 180,000 barrels of oil per day to criminals," Oniwon told the House of Representatives petroleum committee, noting that Ghana gets by on 120,000 barrels per day.

Nigeria is the world’s eighth largest crude producer and Africa’s most populous nation with 167 million people, while Ghana, which has a nascent but promising petroleum industry, has a population of roughly 24 million.

"These people drill into the pipeline, take what they want and at the end of the day, they just leave the pipeline to gush out its content into the environment," Oniwon added.

 

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