NNPC Suggests Ways To End Pipeline Vandalism

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has laid out steps to mitigate the lingering menace of pipeline vandalism and crude oil theft in the nation’s Oil and Gas Industry.

Speaking Tuesday in Abuja at the inaugural Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) Policy Dialogue, the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari, said oil theft had remained a challenge in the Industry despite some strong interventions in the past.

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Represented at the event by the NNPC Chief Operating Officer, Upstream, Roland Ewubare, Kyari listed measures to curb the menace to include security architecture with single accountability for national critical infrastructure.

Other measures include Industry and regulatory commitment to transparent crude oil and products accounting; realistic expectation by host communities; and emplacement of sustainable social investment mechanism.

Applauding the efforts of security agencies in containing vandalism, Kyari noted that the Corporation needed one entity to hold responsible for anything that happens along the infrastructure lines in terms of product loses.

“We are fighting guys who are making $4b a year. What is the budget of the police and the navy? These are people who have enough resource, like you said, to destabilize this country.

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“So I don’t know if we need to come up with a pipeline plan or crude oil protection plan.”

On the immediate and remote causes of oil theft and pipeline vandalism, the GMD posited that most stakeholders were of the view that oil theft was essentially a social problem which underlying causes include poverty in the communities, community-Industry expectation mismatch and corruption.

Lamenting that NNPC, as an operator, had suffered severe attacks on its facilities and assets, Kyari notied that between 2001 to half year 2019, the oil firm had recorded a total of 45,347 pipeline breaks on its Downstream pipeline network across the country.

He further noted that there was a need to redesign the security architecture in the country.

“For Nigeria to prosper NNPC and all other oil companies must operate profitably and efficiently and so oil theft being an old but major problem must be put to an end.”

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Kyari, however, gave his assurance to work with the NEITI to find a long-lasting solution to this menace of pipeline vandalism.

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