An oil pipeline capable of moving 180,000 barrels of crude every day across Nigeria, has stopped transporting the product since the middle of June as a result of theft.
This further brings to the fore the numerous unresolved incidents of crude oil theft, which has become a major challenge in the upstream sector of the industry, which some stakeholders have referred to as organized crime.
According to Bloomberg, an insider who is knowledgeable about the matter, but wishes to remain anonymous, said that the Trans-Niger pipeline has not yet been officially closed with the communication bandwidth estimated to be about 15 per cent of Nigeria’s latest average daily production output.
Activities of saboteurs and crude oil thieves have become the bane of the oil industry in Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, making it impossible for the country to meet up with its Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)’s quota in recent years.
Nigeria has been experiencing some of the worst crude oil theft in its history with millions of dollars lost daily. There have been several allegations of complicity levelled against security agencies following the increasing incidents of crude oil theft.
The Federal Government had revealed that Nigeria lost about $1 billion in revenue to pipeline vandals and oil thieves in the first quarter of 2022.
