Nigeria losing 180,000 barrels to oil thieves daily – NNPC

The country is losing about 180,000 barrels of crude oil daily to thieves, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has said.
The Group Managing Director, NNPC, Mr. Austen Oniwon, who said this on Thursday when members of the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream) paid an oversight visit to the corporation in Abuja, also solicited the assistance of the National Assembly to combat the menace of illegal oil bunkering and crude oil theft.
The NNPC boss said, “The first challenge, which I will like the House to help us with is the high level of insecurity of oil and gas facilities. As at today, our operations have been severely handicapped by the activities of these criminals.
“We are losing almost 180,000 barrels of oil per day to criminals. If you reflect back that the total amount of crude being produced per day in Ghana and which sustains the whole country is about 120,000 barrels, yet, as a nation, we lose more than that to criminals.”
Beyond the financial damage to the national treasury, illegal refineries built by oil thieves, according to him, are causing near permanent environmental damage to the Niger Delta region where they are located.