NNPC: Vandalism is a national calamity | 5,000km of oil pipelines not working

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) says over 5,000 kilometers of oil pipelines are not working.

Mele Kyari, the group chief executive officer (CEO) of the company, made this known on Tuesday, during an interactive session with the senate committee on petroleum (downstream).

He said the nation’s four oil refineries will be functional very soon, describing oil pipeline vandalism as a national calamity.

The NNPC said pipeline vandalism has been bedevilling the oil sector over the decades as the company had not been able to pump through pipelines from Warri to Benin within the last 22 years.

“Over 5,000 kilometers of oil pipelines in the country are not working. As a result of pipeline vandalism, 10 million litres of oil was lost from volume pumped from Aba to Enugu at a time,” Kyari said.

“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.”

However, Kyari said the company is replacing a large number of outdated and vandalised pipelines as a way to tackle the menace.

He said NNPC is now a profitable business as a result of the oil industry’s deregulation — particularly the removal of the petrol subsidy in May this year.

The NNPC GCEO said the company lost N802 billion prior to the deregulation in 2018, but made an excess profit of N687 billion following the deregulation in 2021.

Kyari said although 67 million litres of oil were consumed daily during the subsidy regime, the average consumption is now 55 million litres, adding that the issue of smuggling the product across borders has become a thing of the past.