Nigeria lost N38.88 billion ($243 million) worth of oil products last year from sabotage to the country’s pipeline network, state-owned oil company Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said.
Thieves punctured 3,571 lines in Nigeria’s network of 6,000 state-owned pipelines, up from 2,230 in 2012, when the product loss came to about Naira 21.48 billion, NNPC CEO Joseph Dawha said in a speech at an industry conference in Abuja.
“These acts have resulted to loss of revenue by the government and production capacity at our refineries,” Dawha added.
He said the government would need to develop “critical infrastructure and key resources protection” in line with that of the US, and also called for an increase to prosecution rates in theft cases.
Nigeria’s four state-owned refineries operates far below their capacity partly due to the frequent sabotage of the crude pipelines that feed into the plants.
NNPC data released this week showed that the refineries operated at an average of 15 percent of their combined nameplate capacity of 445,000 b/d in the first quarter of this year, down from 22 percent at the end of last year.