We Must Fight Against Insecurity In The Oil And Gas Sector – NNPC

The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mele Kyari has come out to say that Nigeria’s oil production is reducing.

He recently had his say while speaking to the press, and Nigerians have been reacting.

According to him, from 1.28 million barrels per day in April, Nigeria’s oil production is currently inching towards 1.7mbpd, and it is solely down to to oil theft and vandalism.

He added that there is a clear need to fight insecurity in the oil and gas sector to increase production.

His words, “How do you increase oil production? Remove the security challenge we have in our onshore assets. As we all know, the security challenge is real. It is not just about theft, it is about the availability of the infrastructure to deliver the volume to the market.

No one is going to put money into oil production when he knows the production will not get to the market. Within the last two years, we removed over 5,800 illegal connections from our pipelines. We took down over 600 illegal refineries – cooking pots or whatever they were. You simply cannot get people to put money until you solve that problem.

Barging is not normal. Barging is not economical, even trucking. In 1991, we didn’t think of barging, even to put oil on the trucks. But that’s what we are doing today.

The good news is, there is substantial work that is being done by the government and I’m not going to speak about it. But I know that this will come to pass. It’s already subsiding. We are already seeing the results.

As of today’s data, we’re inching to 1.7mbpd. We won’t celebrate this. On 17th of April 2020, our production, without doing anything, without drilling new wells, shot to 2.2mbpd. The difference was COVID-19. The thieves, the vandals, everybody went to sleep.

We should be able to take control of this infrastructure. We are doing many things. I am very sure things are changing and that is why we are seeing the new value that is coming on the table. Production will improve.”

WOW.