By Ndubuisi Micheal Obineme
Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production Company has called on the Federal Government of Nigeria to collaborate with them to find out a lasting solution to crudeoil theft and vandalism in Nigeria.
During the NOG 2019 recently held in Abuja, Aiteo’s Managing Director, Mr. Victor Okonkwo, disclosed that the company has lost $2 billion either on daily or monthly basis due to oil theft and vandalism.
Accoding to him, Aiteo operates a very key strategic business of oil and gas infrastructure in Nigeria which is the Nembe Creek Trunk Line, NCTL. It is over 100 kilometres and designed to carry about 6000 barrels of oil per day.
“Increasingly, there have been a lot of incursions into that pipeline leading to outages of our production and sometimes shutdown. This pipeline not only does it deliver Aiteo’s crude to the terminal, it carries crude for five other companies including Shell.
“If we look at the shutdown impact in financial terms, as a result of these oil breakages and theft is over $2 billion for the past four years. This is what we have lost not just as a company but also as a nation. These include consequential royalties and other revenue that ought to be accruing to the government is lost just because of the activities of these vandals.
“That is why we are calling on government to collaborate with us to find out a lasting solution to this menace,” he added
While speaking on Aiteo’s operations in the host Communities, Mr. Okonkwo added: “Our host communities are very important to us and at this point I like to give it to the communities of Nembe who are hosting majority of our production and they have been supportive in Aiteo’s goal to achieve its objectives”.
Aiteo operates key strategic business of oil infrastructures in Nigeria and a major stakeholder across the energy value chain with huge investments in Nigeria. The company is known to be the biggest single investment decision makers up to 2014, when it invested over $2.5 billion in acquiring OML 29 asset.