Since the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited led the fight against crude oil theft in the country’s Niger Delta region, there has been an improvement in the availability of some oil pipelines across the country.
Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Limited told Reuters yesterday that the new development was also owed to the deployment of the security apparatus of erstwhile militant, Government Tompolo to fish out pipeline vandals and oil thieves
NLNG spokesman, Andy Odeh told Reuters in an email, “We have begun to see improvement in the availability of key crude oil transportation trunklines. If this trend is sustained, we expect it will support improved gas supply to NLNG once currently flooded oil and gas infrastructures become accessible.”
Also Read: Curbing Oil Theft Has Helped Pipeline Availability, Nigeria LNG Says
NLNG said due to the floods its operations are largely limited. In October 2022, NLNG declared force majeure but maintained that it was still operating but at limited capacity due to extreme flooding in several communities across the Niger Delta region. At the time, NLNG had said that the force majeure was a consequence of a similar notice by upstream gas suppliers due to the impact of flood in their production facilities.
Observers insist that Nigeria’s oil and gas exports were at risk, due to the high rate of flooding in Rivers, Delta, and Bayelsa states of the Niger Delta region. Current reports show that most communities in the region are flooded, potentially placing oil and gas facilities at severe risk.
Odeh was quoted saying that the NLNG Train 7 project, which would increase output at its Bonny Island LNG plant to 30 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) from 22 mtpa, was 32% complete.
He said: “Construction has commenced in earnest and going according to plan.”
Also Read: Flood: NLNG Says Force Majeure Did Not Halt Production
For the record: In October 2022, the chief financial officer at NNPC Limited, Umar Ajiya said that Nigeria loses $150million in revenue every other day from pipeline vandalism and sideline production.
This was after the NNPC group managing director, Mele Kyari told members of Nigeria’s National Assembly on October 4, that NNPC had uncovered an illegal 4km pipeline from Forcados in Delta State to the sea and a loading port that has operated for the last nine years.
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