Nigeria Lost $2.8B To Oil-Related Crimes Last Year

Oil-related crimes in Nigeria cost the African OPEC producer US$2.8 billion in lost revenues in 2018, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported on Tuesday, citing a United Nations report on West Africa.

“Oil-related crimes resulted in the loss of nearly 2.8 billion dollars in revenues last year in Nigeria, according to government figures,” says the semi-annual ‘Report by the Secretary-General on the activities of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS)’.

Last year, between January 1 and November 23, as many as 82 incidents of maritime crime and piracy were reported in the Gulf of Guinea on Africa’s Atlantic Coast, according to the UN report cited by NAN.

“Maritime crime and piracy off the coast of West Africa continued to pose a threat to peace, security and development in the region,” the UN says.

In Nigeria, following a wave of militant violence on onshore oil installations in 2016 and early 2017, oil production started to recover in the latter half of 2017, when attacks subsided.

According to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the country’s oil production increased by 9 percent in 2018 compared to 2017, the NNPC Group’s Managing Director Maikanti Baru said in a statement NNPC issued last week.

Although Nigeria has managed to restore its oil production to around 1.8 million bpd, following major militant attacks on oil infrastructure in 2016, sabotages in parts of the oil-rich Niger Delta continue to plague its oil production and the oil majors operating there, a local manager for Shell told Bloomberg in the middle of 2018.

“Security in parts of the Niger delta remains a major concern with persisting incidents of criminality, kidnapping and vandalism as well as onshore and offshore piracy,” Igo Weli, general manager for external relations at Shell’s Nigerian unit, told Bloomberg in June.

Crude oil theft on Shell’s pipeline network resulted in a 50-percent increase in oil losses, the oil supermajor said in its 2017 sustainability report published in April 2018.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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