Opeoluwani Akintayo 23 August 2017, Sweetcrude, Lagos – Data gathered from the Nigerian Extractive Transparency Initiative, NEITI, have shown how Nigeria lost $15.9 billion as a result of crude oil theft, pipeline sabotage and deferred production in four years.
The data covering 2011 to 2014 showed that a total volume of 38.6 million barrels of crude oil was lost in 2011, costing $4.4 billion.
Year 2012 had the second lowest loss, with 23.8 million barrels of crude oil lost, amounting to $2.7 billion.
The NEITI figures also showed that in 2013, the country witnessed the highest loss of 37.7 million barrels of crude oil, totaling $4.7 billion.
And in 2014, Nigeria lost 40.2 million barrels of crude oil, amounting to $4.1 billion.
Total volume of crude oil lost was 140.3 million, amounting to $15.9 billion from 2011 to 2014, the NEITI figures indicated.
In another data released earlier in the year, which also indicated revenue loss by Nigeria, NEITI said the country’s crude oil production declined by 12 per cent in the third quarter of 2016 due mainly to militant attacks in the Niger Delta.
The data contained in the agency’s ‘Occasional Paper Series’, with emphasis on the ‘Review of NNPC’s Monthly Financial and Operations Reports’, said Nigeria had “consistently recorded significant declines in crude oil output since the end of the fourth quarter of 2015”.
Specifically, the report disclosed that in the fourth quarter of 2015, Nigeria’s crude oil production rose to an average of 2.17 million barrels per day from an average of 2.15 million barrels in the third quarter of 2015, while it slumped to an average of 2.05 million barrels per day in the first quarter of 2016, representing a decline of 5.5 percent.
Nigeria’s crude oil production dropped further by 11.7 percent in the second quarter of 2016 to an average of 1.81 million barrels per day, while it again slumped by 11.6 per cent to end the third quarter of 2016 at 1.6 million barrels per day.
These documented cases of crude oil production decline also indicated revenue loss by the country, NEITI said.
But it maintained that “militant activity alone is not the sole reason for the fall and volatility in crude oil production” as it stated: “This period was characterised by a significant fall in the price of crude oil from over $100 per barrel in July 2014 to less than $50 per barrel since 2015”.