Mkpoikana Udoma
Port Harcourt — The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited has warned that if oil theft, illegal oil bunkering and refinning activities persist, the country will be forced to spend up to 50percent of its annual budget on environmental remediation in the future.
This is as the company has announced that its Trans Niger Pipeline which crisscrosses Rivers State to Bonny export terminal has been inoperative since March 2022.
The General Manager of SPDC, External Relations, Igo Weli, said this in Port Harcourt on Tuesday during the SPDC JV engagement with journalists on crude theft, pipeline vandalism and illegal refineries
Well said Shell was doing so much to protect its facilities from oil thieves and vandals, lamenting that 91percent of spills from Shell facilities were from third party interference and sabotage.
“What we do in Nigeria to protect our facilities, we do not do it in other countries where we operate. We have a daily overflight with security agents; we have detailed engagements with security agents and recently we are deploying drones to monitor our facilities.
“The loss is higher that is why it is affecting the economy, the exchange rate and every other aspect of the economy.
“If the situation continues, if the spills (from sabotage and theft) in the Niger Delta region persists; it will get to a point Nigeria will allocate about 50percent of our national budget to remediating the environment. It will get to a point that we cannot fund basic stuff because a good percentage will be devoted to cleaning spills from sabotage.”
“If this continues the spills in the future will be horrible and if you want to clean it up, then you will have to allocate about 50percent of the national budget to clean up avoidable spills.
“The implication is that there will be no growth, because funds for infrastructure and education and other things will be channeled into it.”
On the inoperativeness of the Trans Niger Pipeline, the Shell External Relations boss said there was no plans to commence operations on the pipeline until there was confidence of safety for its products.
“It makes no economic sense to keep pumping crude into the TNP. How can we pump in 200barrels while only 5barrels gets to Bonny terminal.
“We will only commence operations on the TNP when we have the confidence that our product will be safe and the pipeline is going to work the way it’s supposed to work.”
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