Abuja, NIGERIA — Nigerians hopes of having the country’s refineries resume operation in December 2023, as several promises by Federal Government, may have been dashed following claims by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited ( NNPCL), Mele Kyari, that 5,000 kilometres of oil pipelines across the country have been vandalized.
Nigerian, a major producer of crude oil spends billions of dollars to subsidize imported petroleum products annually. This has had a significant impact on funds available for critical infrastructure and other essential sectors such as education, health, and defence.
Successive governments have made efforts to make the country’s refineries functional with December 2023 set aside as final date to make one or two functional but NNPLC lamentation that the operations of the company are being adversely affected by the activities of vandals, coming just few days to December has triggered concerns.
However, he assured Nigerians that the nation’s four oil refineries would be made functional very soon
According to Kyari, while speaking at an interactive session with members of the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), in Abuja, on Tuesday. oil pipeline vandalism has been a major challenge facing the sector over several decades noting that the company had been unable to pump oil through pipelines from Warri to Benin within the last 22 years.
Kyari, “Over 5,000 kilometres of oil pipelines in the country are not working. As a result of pipeline vandalism, 10 million litres of oil were lost from the volume pumped from Aba to Enugu at a time.
“The company has been unable to pump oil from Warri to Benin within the last 22 years and cannot connect to Ore.
“ There is no amount of security measures that had not been taken to curb the crime without success, which to us in NNPCL, is substantially a national calamity .”
He, however, said as a way out, the company is embarking on massive replacement of the pipelines which aside from being vandalised, are old and obsolete.
Kyari further explained that the deregulation of the oil sector and in particular, subsidy removal, which was carried out in May 2023, has turned NNPCL into a profitable company.
He maintained that before deregulation in 2018, the company posted a loss of N802billion but after deregulation in 2021, it recorded an excess profit of N687billion.
The CEO explained that while 67 million litres of oil were consumed per day during the era of the subsidy regime, an average of 55 million litres is currently being consumed daily.
According to him, the smuggling of product products across our borders has become a thing of the past.
The chairman of the committee, Senator Ifeanyi Ubah ( APC Anambra South) as well as other committee members, responded separately to submissions made by the NNPCL boss.
They argued that a proper assessment of the challenges of the sector and solutions to such problems can better be handled at a retreat.
In his intervention, Senator Seriake Dickson ( PDP Bayelsa West ), told the NNPCL boss to look critically at the surveillance security contract the company is operating as regards the non-inclusion of some oil-producing areas.
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