NEITI: Nigeria Loses $1.35b To Crude Oil Theft In Six Months

The Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has said 22 million barrels of crude oil was lost in the first half 2019 which spans between January to June.

This was disclosed on Tuesday by the Executive Secretary of NEITI, Waziri Adio at the inaugural policy dialogue themed ‘stemming oil theft in Nigeria’ at the Transcorp Hilton Abuja.

According to Adio this loss is based on the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, and the National Executive Council estimates, translates to $1.35billion in value, which is about 5% of the 2019 budget.

A further breakdown of the loss shows that the value is higher than the combined allocations capital allocations for health, education,defence and agric.

Recall that the transparency initiative in a 10- year report detailed that $41.9b was lost between 2009 to 2018.

The 2019 loss is however 5 million higher than that of 2018 which stood at 17.46million.

On why the oil theft menace lingers Adio said there is a large scale of infrastructure that needs to be protected adding that there is also an active market for this stolen crude and products.

He further linked the menace to weak and inadquate sanctions from the legislators.