Optimistic that crude oil thieves would soon be chased out of the creeks, the Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Mr Timipre Sylva, said the government would brave the odds to ensure that the country meets its Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) crude oil production quota of 1.8 million bpd by the end of May 2022.
The minister spoke a day after OPEC agreed to maintain its production cut among member countries to maintain market stability.
To this end, Sylva said the Federal Government will continue to improve security along the tracks of the major crude oil pipelines and block every leakage through which crude oil is stolen by oil thieves and pipeline vandals.
He noted that the inability of Nigeria to meet the current OPEC quota is not due to lack of production capacity on the part of crude oil producers “but because a lot of producers decided not to inject into the pipelines because they were losing a lot of their productions when they inject into the pipelines”.
The minister noted that “Once we are able to build enough confidence in the security of the pipelines, they (producers) will then be able to inject into the pipelines once again and once that happens, we will be able to meet up with our OPEC quotas. That is where we are going and the early signals are there that we are making very good progress”.
He continued, “Our pipelines have issues and we put security structure in place involving the communities, the security, oil companies and government and we are beginning to see some early signs of improvement. Our production for example has improved from where we were in the past. We are producing over a million barrels now and we believe that when we have built confidence enough on the pipelines and all the producers begin to inject into the pipelines that have been secured, we will be able to produce quickly to meet our OPEC quota. That’s really our plan and I am hoping that before the exit of this administration, we should be able to meet our OPEC quota”.
The minister added that with the current rehabilitations of the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries as well as the planned fixing of the Kaduna refinery and the coming on stream of the Dangote Refinery, Nigeria was sure of guaranteed crude production that will ease the incessant fuel crisis faced in the country.
Between Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna we have over 410,000 barrels and if you have all that refined in-country that will be at least half of our consumption and with Dangote refinery which is expected to come on stream by first quarter next year, we are expecting that we will actually be exiting the importation of petroleum products by third quarter of next year. But I believe that even before the third quarter of next year we should be able to exit the importation of refined products,” Sylva said.