Crime
‘Pipeline Vandalisation National Calamity’ – NNPCL
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‘Pipeline Vandalisation National Calamity’ – NNPCL
By Aisha Musa
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has described the vandalisation of over 5,000 kilometres of oil pipelines in the country as a national calamity.
Chief Executive Officer of the company, Mele Kyari, who spoke during an interactive session with the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), however, assured Nigerians that the nation’s four oil refineries would be functional very soon.
He said the problem of oil pipeline vandalism had 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.
Kyari said, “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, however, said as a way out, the company was embarking on massive replacement of the pipelines which aside from being vandalised were 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.
