The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dr Tajudeen Abbas says Nigeria loses about $46 billion dollars (N16.25 trillion) to crude oil theft between 2009 and 2020.
The Speaker made this known while constituting the Adhoc committee to investigate crude oil theft and loss of revenue.
Dr Abbas said the menace of crude oil theft has drastically hampered the growth of the country’s oil production, with Nigeria losing between 5 to 30 percent of daily crude oil production.
He however explained that critical agencies in the oil and gas sector such as the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited, Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, and Ministry of Petroleum Resources and others failed to honour the invitation of the committee.
According to him, the Heads of the Agencies are not doing the nation any good by refusing to appear before the parliament to answer questions on the critical aspect of the economy.
Represented by the Chairman of the House Committee on Petroleum Upstream, Alhassan Ado-Doguwa, the Speaker said if decisive action was not taken to address the issue, the country may be thrown into a deeper fiscal crisis due to dwindling revenue from the oil and gas sector.
Quoting data from the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), the Speaker said Nigeria’s oil production declined from 2.51 million barrels per day in 2005 to 1.77 million barrels per day in 2020.
“NEITI reports also show that 619 million barrels of crude valued at $46 billion were stolen in the period 2009-2020”, adding that “Nigeria has continually failed to meet its daily production quota as set by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).”
The Chairman of the Committee, Alhassan Rumrum, said the volume of losses incurred through oil theft in the country and its associates have impacted negatively on the economy and cannot be over looked by any government.
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