Nigeria’s Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative has said that the country lost $1.84 billion worth of petroleum products from refineries in nine years.
The Executive Secretary of NEITI, Ogbonnaya Orji, disclosed this on Monday at the opening ceremony of the 2024 NEITI board retreat/meeting in Lagos.
He explained that 4.2 billion liters of petroleum products were lost from the refineries as a result of oil theft between 2009 and 2018. This was estimated at 140,000 barrels per day.
Worried over the untamed rise of oil theft in Nigeria, Orji said, “Figures contained in our 2009 to 2020 audits have put Nigeria’s losses to crude oil theft over 12 years at 619.7 million barrels valued at $46.16bn or N16.25tn. Similarly, between 2009 and 2018, the country also lost 4.2 billion liters of petroleum products from refineries valued at $1.84 billion.”
The development comes as the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited barely three weeks ago recorded 400 oil theft incidents in a week.
In June, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC said Nigeria’s crude oil production rose slightly to 1.276 million barrels per day amid the country’s 2,000,000 mbpd targets.