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From Kenneth Udeh, Abuja
The Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream) on Tuesday engaged the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, on issues bedevilling the oil sector of the Nation’s economy.
During the interface Kyari, who was accompanied by top management staff of the company, provided responses on the gains of the deregulation of the oil sector, insecurity , pipeline vandalism, among others.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) while interacting with the committee’s chairman, Senator Ifeanyi Ubah, and other members of the committee lamented that vandalism carried out on over 5,000 kilometres of oil pipelines by vandals across the country has become a national calamity.
NNPCL CEO Mele Kyari, who made the lamentation during an interactive session with the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream) , however assured Nigerians that the Nation’s four oil refineries would be made functional very soon.
Problem of oil pipeline vandalism, according to him , has been bedevilling the sector over the decades as the company had not been able to pump oil through the pipeline from Warri to Benin within the last 22 years .
“Over 5,000 kilometres of oil pipelines in the country are not working . As a result of pipeline vandalism , 10 million litres of oil was 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 and cannot connect to Ore.
“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.
He said as a way out, the company is embarking on massive replacement of the pipelines which, aside from being vandalised, are old and obsolete.
He explained further to the committee that deregulation of the oil sector and in particular, subsidy removal carried out in May this year has turned NNPCL into a profitable company.
According to him, before deregulation in 2018, the company made a loss of N802 billion but after deregulation in 2021, made excess profit of N687 billion.
He added that while 67 million litres of oil was consumed per day during the era of subsidy regime , an average of 55 million litres are being consumed on a daily basis now , just as the problem of smuggling the product across borders has become a thing of the past.
Ubah (APC, Anambra South) and all the members, responded separately to submissions made by the NNPCL boss that proper dissection of challenges facing the sector would be better made in a retreat .
Senator Seriake Dickson (PDP, Bayelsa West) ttold the NNPCL boss to look critically into the surveillance security contract the company is operating as regards 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.
