Nigerian oil industry has being plagued with crude oil theft and the government seems unable to curb it. All its effort at finding a lasting solution has also failed. Though one of the saboteurs of Nigeria crude oil production capacity was given a contract worth $103.4m in 2011 to reduce crude oil theft, yet, Nigeria continues to lose a conservative figure of 400,000 bpd. Some analysts put it at around 700,000 bpd. Following a layman’s mathematical approach, 400,000bpd at a conservative price of $100pb (note: a barrel of crude oil was over $115 during the period under review), is a whooping sum of $40 million lost to saboteurs daily. Multiplying these by 7days gives you $280 million weekly and $1.12 billion in a month. What this reflects is that in 2012 alone, Nigeria lost $13.44 billion to crude oil theft. Adding 2013 and 2014 figures will amount to $40.32 billion deposited in the bank account of few thieves. What is more saddening, as we speak, the crude oil resources of this nation is still being stolen. With the conservative figure of $40.32 billion frittered in the past three years alone, Nigeria would have built four types of Alhaji Dangote’s $9billion worth 400,000bpd capacity Refinery, Petrochemical and Fertilizer Plant with a change of $4 billion. By the way, we can choose to build lower capacity refineries for far less. Rudimentary economics teaches us that a nation should only export finished goods and not raw materials. Kikiowo Ileowo,
Posted on: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 21:31:03 +0000
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