Shock as NNPC finds petroleum products in Churches, Mosques

Nigeria’s oil giant, NNPC Tuesday made a shocking revelation about how people across religious beliefs are actively involved in pipeline vandalism.

Group CEO of rechristened NNPC Ltd, Mele Kyari, said while addressing State House Press Corps that stolen products were found in Churches and Mosques after a fire incident in Lagos.
The briefing was anchored by Presidential Communications Team at the State House, Abuja.

Kyari said, “You remember in Lagos when a fire outbreak happened on one of our pipelines? We discovered that some of the pipelines were actually connected to individuals’ homes. And not only that, with all sensitivity to our religious beliefs, some of the pipelines and some of the products that we found are in churches and mosques”

He painted a further picture of challenges posed by pipeline vandalism, saying, “As you may be aware, because of the very unfortunate acts of vandals along our major pipelines from Atlas Cove all the way to Ibadan, and all others connecting all the 37 depots that we have across the country, none of them can take delivery of products today.

“The reason is very simple. For some of the lines, for instance, from Warri to Benin, we haven’t operated for 15 years. Every molecule of product that we put gets lost. Do you remember the sad fire incident close to Sapele that killed so many people? We had to shut it down, and as we speak, we have a high level of losses on our product pipeline.

“When we say we are losing several 700,000 barrels of crude oil daily, we mean it… There is no company that will produce oil and then you lose 80 percent of that and continue to produce the oil.

He added, “So we deliberately shut down the pipelines whenever we see these infractions getting to a limit that we cannot manage. So that means as we speak today, we know for sure, there’s at least 700,000 barrels that we could have produced that we can’t because we cannot guarantee the safety of the pipeline.”