Kyari said NNPCL had not been able to pump oil through the pipeline from Warri to Benin within the last 22 years due to pipeline vandalism.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has expressed concern over the rate of vandalism that has occurred on more than 5,000 kilometers of oil pipelines across the country.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the NNPCL, Mele Kyari, who described pipeline vandalism as a national calamity, remarked this during an interactive session with the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream) on Tuesday.
According to him, the problem of oil pipeline vandalism has plagued the sector, making the firm unable to pump oil through the pipeline from Warri to Benin within the last 22 years.
“Over 5,000 kilometers of oil pipelines in the country are not working. As a result of pipeline vandalism, 10 million liters of oil were lost from the volume pumped from Aba to Enugu at a time.
“The company has been unable to pump oil from Warri to Benin within the last 22 years.
“There is no amount of security measures that had not been taken to curb the crime without success, which to us in NNPCL is substantially a national calamity,” he said.
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Kyari also informed the committee that the company is replacing a large number of outdated and vandalised pipelines as a precaution.
He further told the committee that NNPCL is now a profitable business as a result of the oil sector’s deregulation, particularly the removal of subsidy that took place in May, even as he assured that the country’s four oil refineries would soon be operational.
According to him, the company lost N802 billion before deregulation in 2018 but made an excess profit of N687 billion following deregulation in 2021.
He added that while 67 million liters of oil was consumed per day during the era of the subsidy regime, an average of 55 million liters are being consumed daily just as the problem of smuggling the product across borders has become a thing of the past.
Responding to these reports, Senator Seriake Dickson (PDP, Bayelsa West), urged the NNPCL boss to look critically into the surveillance security contract that the company is operating as regards the non-inclusion of some oil-producing areas.
“Some local governments in Bayelsa State like Sagbama where i come from, are not covered by the contract with attendant consequences,” he said.
