Crude oil production is nearing 1.7 million barrels per day, according to the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mele Kyari. This was revealed by the NNPCL boss, as he addressed stakeholders at an engagement between the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists and the NNPCL in Lagos on Saturday.
According to him, 1.7 million barrels per day was a boost from 1.28 million barrels reported in April. According to Kyari, the nation’s crude oil production keeps dropping due to oil theft and vandalism, emphasising the need to fight insecurity in the oil and gas sector to increase production. “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,” he stated. Due to pipeline vandalism, Kyari said everyone resorted to barging, with some spending $21 to transport a barrel of oil to the terminals.
“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,” he stated. However, Kyari disclosed, “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.
