With Nigeria’s four refineries currently not refining crude oil, the nation witnessed a significant rise in pipeline vandalism in the month of May, 2021.
Energy Vanguard gathered that a total of 64 pipeline points were vandalised in the period under review, representing a 39.13 per cent increase from the 46 points recorded in April 2021.
This development was obtained from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC’s Monthly Financial and Operation Report (MFOR), which was made available to our correspondent.
A breakdown of the incident areas shows that Port Harcourt area had the major hit of the development, accounting for about 65 per cent of the vandalised points, followed by Mosimi area with 30 per cent, while Kaduna area recorded the least with barely five per cent of the vandalised points.
According to the corporation, “Products theft and vandalism have continued to destroy value and put NNPC at a disadvantaged competitive position. A total of 545 vandalized points have been recorded between May 2020 to May 2021
“The NNPC, in collaboration with the local communities and other stakeholders, continuously strove to reduce and eventually eliminate this menace.”
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Meanwhile, the corporation in its full year report for 2020 showed that the country lost N33.5 billion in pipeline repairs and management costs for pipe breaks.
The report also revealed that in the same period under review, Nigeria recorded 441 pipeline vandalism across NNPC’s pipeline network. The highest was recorded in January 2020 with 60 breaks and the lowest in March with 19 breakpoints.
Within the period, pipeline networks in the Mosimi area accounted for more than half of the total vandalised points. Pipelines in Kaduna and Port Harcourt areas accounted for the remaining.
Compared with other government-owned oil companies, NNPC’s revenue is below par. For example, in 2019, while the NNPC group reported a N20.2 billion (about $56 million) loss, the China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) posted a $396 billion profit.
Also, Saudi Arabia Oil company (Saudi Aramco) posted a profit of $330 billion, Rosneft Oil Corporation (Rosneft), controlled by the Russian government through Rosneftegaz, posted $140bn profit.