By Fola James
The Nigeria oil sector continues to bleed due to oil theft accordingly to the chairman of of Heirs Holdings, Tony Elumelu. Within eight months the country has lost a whopping $4 billion to oil theft by criminal groups in the Niger Delta, the billion who ventured into oil business last year January, said on Tuesday
Elemelu became a major investor in the sector 13 months ago after acquiring from Shell, Total and Eni the ownership of 45 per cent of a producing oil block in the Niger Delta. The oil bloc is located onshore, a few kilometres north of Port Harcourt, and the deal is worth $ 1 billion.
Speaking as a guest lecturer at the National Defense College Course 30 lecture, Elumelu, who is also the Chairman of the United Bank for Africa! UBA, said oil theft is endangering the country’s economic sustainance as well as its securities. He said criminals are making huge cash from oil theft in Nigeria’s oil producing region.
According to him, “our oil and gas business is threatened by theft. Theft in the Niger Delta is a national menace. We will produce crude oil and the thieves will steal like 50,000 barrels per day. To me, it requires a national seminar and dialogue. In my view it is one of the highest levels of threat to our country because it’s so much money in the hands of people who don’t pay tax, people we don’t regulate, the country is not safe. They do that to us; they do that to other operators also.
“Between three quarters of last year, between January to September 2021, Nigeria lost about $4bn to thieves who don’t pay tax and they will use the money to buy more lethal ammunition, posing threats to our cooperate existence”.
He said, “we produce sometimes about 87,000 barrels per day, thieves take 50,000 per day and to me this requires a national seminar or dialogue.
He stated that Nigeria lost over $4 billion to oil thieves, between January and September last year, noting that tackling the problem will “require strategic leadership to deal with issues like this within the country but the lesson there is resilience in leadership”.
The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, said in one of its audit report that Nigeria lost 42.25 million barrels of crude oil valued at 2.77 billion dollars to oil theft in 2019.
