Nigeria Loses $41.9 Billion To Crude Oil Theft In Ten Years

Data from the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) shows that Nigeria has lost $41.9 billion to vandalism and theft of crude oil and refined products within ten years.

This was contained in the NEITI’s policy brief titled  “Stemming the Increasing Cost of Oil Theft to Nigeria” released in Abuja on Thursday.

Recall that the Ad-Hoc Committee of the National Economic Council (NEC) on crude theft on 29 August 2019 disclosed that Nigeria lost about 22 million barrels in the first six months of 2019 with a monetary value of $1.35 billion.

However, the policy brief explains that this amount is about 5% of the 2019 budget and is higher than the capital allocations for education, health, defence and agriculture combined.

A further breakdown of the reports disclosed that In 10 years (2009 to 2018), Nigeria lost more than 505 million barrels of crude oil and 4.2 billion litres of petroleum products valued at $40.06 billion and $1.84 billion respectively.

 Cumulatively, total crude and product losses for the period under review stood at $41.9 billion which is the size of Nigeria’s entire foreign reserves.

Nigeria’s Foreign Exchange Reserves as at October 2019 was measured at $40.5billion.

The report further explained that in fiscal terms, the country lost enough in 20 months to finance the proposed budget deficit for 2020 which stands at ₦2.18 trillion.

“in 15 months to cover total proposed borrowing or increase capital budget by 100% and in five months to cover pensions, gratuities and retirees’ benefits for 2020,” the report added.

Government has tried to tackle the problem of crude oil theft through a variety of security and other long-term, preventive measures.

In line with his mandate of protecting the nation against economic sabotage, the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari had sought the assistance of the several security services in the country to contain threats against the nation’s oil asset and recover debts.

Recently the corporation in line with its Transparency, Accountability and Performance Excellence Agenda (TAPE), pledge to digitize its downstream operations.