The Federal Government on Monday revealed that its latest findings showed that about 1.2 million barrels of crude oil was consistently shut in by producers across various oil wells in the Niger Delta due to the incessant oil theft in the industry.
It also stated that current statistics showed that the volume of oil lost to theft in Nigeria was about 100,000 barrels per day, translating to an estimated three million barrels every month.
The government disclosed through its Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission at the press briefing in Abuja, as it further stated that the country’s gas reserves had risen to 208 trillion standard cubic feet.
“One of the negative and side effects of crude oil theft is that it has incentivised well shut-ins by producers, in the sense that it is not part of their investment model to produce and hand over to thieves,” the Chief Executive, NUPRC, Gbenga Komolafe, stated.
He added, “So what we have done is that we are engaging with all operators and the target is for us to have clarity around their operations, whereby we try to drill down on their work programmes and visibility, based on what we are expecting from them.
In that regard, we had to set up an operations committee with the aim of identifying shut-in wells. The essence is for us to be able to have feasibility around the wells that are shut-in.
He stated that based on NUPRC’s engagements with investors in the sector, the commission observed that the oil firms were still willing to restart production in the shut-in wells despite the transition to renewable energy.
Read more at: https://punchng.com/nigeria-loses-three-million-oil-barrels-monthly-fg/
