02 November 2013, Lagos – Oil industry experts gathering in Lagos from November 10 to 14 for the 2013 annual conference of the National Association of Petroleum Explorationists, NAPE, will address the challenge of metering the nation’s crude oil output.
Monitoring Nigeria’s crude oil output has remained a major challenge with allegations of continued loss of substantial volume of the produced oil to thieves due to absence of an efficient metering system.
Director of the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, Mr George Osahon, who is also NAPE president, disclosed this in Lagos, saying how much crude that is produced and how much of it that is lost or exported needed to be addressed.
“How much crude is produced? How much of it gets lost or exported. It is just for us to know so that when you say crude oil is lost, you should be able to say how much of it that is lost and where. That means that you must be able to establish at the point of production, how much you sell,” he said.
Osahon, who decried conflicting reports on the part of government agencies and operating companies on the volume of crude oil stolen from the system was, however of the view that only the DPR could determine the volume of oil stolen due to the absence of a metering system or through illegal bunkering and vandalism.
Insisting that the DPR was the sole authority that could tell how much crude that is lost, the DPR boss maintained that if the oil industry regulator is unable to establish this, it should be called to question.
He said: “One ministry will announce that some barrels of crude oil are lost; operating company will give a different figure of number of barrels of oil that is stolen. My feeling is that the DPR should take care of it. If they (DPR) do not know, then they should be called to question. It is only the DPR that should be able to tell us how much oil that is lost and whether the loss is due to theft or not”.