.As country struggles to meet 1.8mbpd OPEC quote
The National Security Adviser, Major General Babagana Monguno (retd), yesterday estimated that Nigeria may lose about $23 billion in 2023 if crude oil theft is not stopped.
He made the comment during the inauguration of a Special Investigation Panel set up to check crude oil theft in the country.
Monguno expressed worries that Nigeria currently produces one million barrels of crude oil per day (mbpd) against the 2mbpd target by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
While lamenting the poor revenues accruing from the petroleum sector, he charged members of the Panel to work towards checking the menace.
The committee is expected to submit its report by February 21st, 2023.
Meanwhile, the Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, said on Monday that Nigeria is working to meet its OPEC oil production quota of 1.8mbpd by the end of May next year.
Sylva noted that the country has enough production capacity, but crude theft and vandalism of pipelines meant that “a lot of producers decided not to inject into the pipelines because they were losing a lot of their production.”
“Once we are able to build enough confidence in the security of the pipelines, they (producers) will then be able to inject into the pipelines once again and once that happens, we will be able to meet up with our OPEC quotas,” he said.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, admitted its cooperation with security forces was yielding fruits as the incidence of oil theft was reducing and will help ramp up production going forward.
A lot of producers decided not to inject into the pipelines because they were losing a lot of their production.
