Nigerian National Petroleum Co. Ltd. (NNPC) has told the country’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that the national oil and gas company needs the agency’s help in stemming oil theft and pipeline vandalism.
At a meeting between the two, NNPC chief executive Mele Kyari told the EFCC that 6,409 illegal refineries in the oil-rich Niger Delta have been deactivated to date.
“Today, we have disconnected up to 4,846 illegal pipes connected to our pipelines, that is out of 5,543 such illegal connection points”, Kyari told EFCC chair Ola Olukoyede, according to an NNPC news release. “That means there are a vast number of such connections that we have not removed”.
“These things don’t just happen from the blues”, Kyari said in the meeting, as quoted in the NNPC report. “They happen in communities and locations we all know. As we remove one illegal connection, another one comes up”.
“This kind of thing does not happen anywhere else in the world”, Kyari added. “When we say illegal connections, they are not invisible things, they are big pipes that require some level of expertise to be installed. Some of them are of the same size as the trunk line itself.
“No one would produce crude oil knowing fully well that it is not going to get to the terminal. That is why nobody is putting money into the business. So, you can’t grow production”.
It was against this backdrop that several energy majors decided to give up assets in the West African country, which is named by the International Energy Agency as “the richest oil resource center of the African continent”.
Shell early this year announced it was divesting its onshore subsidiary in Nigeria. The sale of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd. “marks an important milestone for Shell in Nigeria, aligning with our previously announced intent to exit onshore oil production in the Niger Delta, simplifying our portfolio and focusing future disciplined investment in Nigeria on our Deepwater and Integrated Gas positions”, the British company said in a statement January 16.
Equinor ASA last year decided to exit Nigeria. “This transaction realizes value and is in line with Equinor’s strategy to optimize its international oil and gas portfolio and focus on core areas”, the Norwegian majority state-owned company said in a statement November 29. The decision means Equinor is offloading its 20.21 percent stake in the key Agbami oil field in the Niger Delta operated by Chevron Corp. with a 67.3 percent interest. The world’s biggest oil discovery in 1998, Agbami holds an estimated 900 million barrels of recoverable volumes according to information on Chevron’s website.
On September 4, 2023, Eni SPA announced an agreement divesting one of its units in Nigeria to Oando PLC, saying the move is part of efforts to refocus on more profitable assets. Nigerian Agip Oil Co. Ltd. is an onshore-focused oil and gas exploration and production subsidiary of the Italian company.
In 2022 Exxon Mobil Corp. announced an agreement to sell its equity stake in Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited to an independent local player. Mobil Producing Nigeria holds a 40 percent stake in four oil mining licenses including over 90 shallow-water and onshore platforms and 300 producing wells, according to ExxonMobil.
At the NNPC-EFCC meeting, Kyari told Olukoyede, “I believe, personally, that the very purpose of your commission is to curtail economic crimes, and there is no bigger economic crime of this scale anywhere else than what is happening in this area”.
For his part the EFCC chair challenged NNPC’s management to strengthen efforts to curtail corruption within the company, according to the NNPC report.
To contact the author, email jov.onsat@rigzone.com
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