The state of Nigeria’s pipelines and their vulnerability to physical and cyber attacks came under focus at a conference, organised by Energy and Corporate Africa, in collaboration with Pipeline Professionals’ Association of Nigeria (PLAN), in Abuja, yesterday.

At the event, stakeholders warned that the nation must prioritise pipeline technology amid growing crude oil theft and vandalism.

Participants included: the founder of OilServ, Emeka Okwuosa; Executive Secretary of Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Ogbonna Orji and Chief Executive Officer of Green Energy International Limited, Prof. Anthony Adegbulugbe.

Chairman, of House Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream), Alhassan Doguwa, who represented Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, said a new regulation is being planned to tackle challenges of the oil industry, and that a special committee has already been constituted to bring an end to the menace of oil theft.

Orji said with close to 8,000 reported cases of pipeline breaches, Nigeria has lost about 619 million barrels of crude oil worth $46.1 billion to theft and vandalism.

He called for a new approach to tackling oil theft, crude losses and pipeline vandalisation, and the development of a gas utilisation policy with links to Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan. Orji also urged the fast-tracking of repairs in government-owned refineries and the provision of measures to secure pipelines and the business environment to ease access, product delivery, and evacuation.

On his part, Okwousa noted that while physical attacks on pipelines are worrisome, curbing rising cases of cyber attacks must be prioritised by the industry, even as he called for the deployment of technology, especially the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and blockchain.