Royal Dutch Oil Giant the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) yesterday in Lagos disclosed that it was losing 60,000 barrels of oil daily to oil thieves and suggested that the only way to grow the country's oil reserves to 40 billion barrels was to fight oil theft.
Mr Mutiu Sunmonu, the Country Chair/ Managing Director of Shell companies in Nigeria gave the advise during the ongoing 2013 Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) and Exhibition in Lagos. Sunmonu who was represented by the Managing Director of Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCo), Mr Chike Onyejekwe said that the impact of the activities of crude oil thieves and illegal refineries on the environment in the Niger Delta and the Nigerian economy has worsened.
He said that Nigeria depended on the oil industry for approximately 95 per cent export earnings and 80 per cent of government revenue and therefore should take decisive steps to deal with the phenomenon.
According to him, "Government aspired to increase oil production to four million barrels per day, grow reserves to 40 billion barrels, and earn as much revenue from gas as oil by 2020.
He said "In order to achieved this, we must urgently tackle oil theft in the country, at some point this year, over 60,000 barrels of crude was being stolen from SPDC lines every day". He said that activities of illegal refineries was causing serious damage to the environment, while significant proportion of the stolen crude used in the illegal refineries are disposed off in the environment.
According to him, "'The scale and complexity of this problems is beyond the control of any company, as we discuss this issues today let us be honest, let us consider genuine ways that can help to stop this problems. Personally, I believe the perpetrators of these crimes needs to be arrested and prosecuted, until there is deterrent, the industry doesn't stand a chance against illegal bunkering of the scale we are seeing today", he added.
Sumonu said that Shell companies in Nigerian run extensive training programmes to build human capital development as an enabler to grow the Africa's oil and gas production. The company had also included awards of post graduates scholarship in engineering and related fields.
The country chair said that the company was at the vanguard of developing the local content initiative, adding that several feed engineering training, vocational training, entrepreneurship development programmes and training of wire line engineers for Nigerian service provider had been initiated to grow the sector.
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