Nigeria rated as highest in oil theft

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Special Duties, Senator Marcus Ikisikpo, has disagreed with the latest ranking of Nigeria as country
with highest crude oil theft, describing the report as inaccurate because it failed to reveal the parametre used.

Nigeria has been listed as the country with the highest incidents of crude oil theft in the world, according to a data released by
Oilprice.com.

According to the website, with as much as 400,000 barrels of crude oil stolen daily, Nigeria is ranked worse than Mexico, Iraq, Russia and Indonesia on the top five countries most plagued by oil theft.

The report put Nigeria’s losses to crude theft at $1.7bn, about N272bn per month, representing 7.7 percent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic
Product.

But while faulting the report, Ikisikpo, who is representing the oil rich-Bayelsa East Senatorial District in the National Assembly, in an interview with our correspondent in Abuja, queried the parameters used for the ranking.

He said, “With the issue of crude oil, I would say it is difficult for us to account for all the crude produced because of leakages in the sense that we have illegal refineries, we have even unrecorded vessels taking from our crude oil.

However, How do they know the parameter for ranking Nigeria as one of the countries with highest crude theft? Yes, there are leakages, but I don’t believe that Nigeria ranks top in oil theft.”

He attributed the leakages being recorded in the crude production to alleged insincerity among officials of the various agencies of
government saddled with the responsibility of monitoring and managing the process.