Oritsebugbemi Omatseyin
Lagos — The Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Awwal Gambo, has described the estimated amount of stolen crude oil in the country as unrealistic and impossible.
In an interview with Channels Television on Monday, Vice Admiral AZ Gambo clarified that the data may not have emanated from oil theft alone noting that the government agencies were mistakenly calculating losses due to force majeure, and shut-ins as part of oil being stolen.
He stated that oil Losses also occur as a result of metering errors on the operating platforms. But the volume of crude oil shot-ins from non-production is often added to figures for oil theft instead of declaring them as oil losses.
“We need to understand the difference between oil theft and oil loss. While oil theft is siphoning crude oil from vandalised pipes into barges, oil losses occur when there is known production, especially during shut-ins and force majeures, not allowing the Federal Government to earn the desired revenue it should.
“Some sources also claim that about 20,000 to 200,000 barrels per day are being considered stolen. Most of these claims are definitely outrageous and they are unrealistic.”
“Let us even briefly analyse this. For instance, 100,000 barrels of crude oil is equivalent to 15,800,000 litres of crude, which requires a five-ton barge making 3,160 trips per day to convey this product out of the creeks.
“Let us agree that you have many barges because of the time required to carry out these products. That means you will entirely close the navigable waters heading out to sea, through the estuaries to embark them or transship them into a mother vessel that will eventually take them out of the country”.
“This is most unlikely considering the heightened presence of security agencies in the maritime environment as well as the launch of the subsisting operations by the Nigerian Navy, including of course, the deployment of the maritime domain awareness facilities”.
“As much as there is no perfect system, the phenomenon of oil theft and losses must be properly de-conflicted in order to profer lasting solutions to the issue which is currently plaguing our economic resources.
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