The Nigerian federal government plans to adopt trucks and barges to transport crude oil to tackle pipeline vandalism.

This was contained in a document by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission on “Stability in the Nigerian Energy Sector: Integrated Strategies for Infrastructure, Transportation and Security”.

NUPRC said the move was to avoid production deferment, losses and other undesirable consequences due to pipeline disruption and outages.

It said, “Through increased surveillance and deployment of security forces, the upstream industry has increasingly enhanced the protection of oil and gas infrastructure from criminal syndicates who often target oil and gas installations to siphon off crude oil for illegal sale.

“The syndicates’ activities have led to revenue losses for the government, oil companies and other stakeholders, increased cost of production, as well as far-reaching environmental consequences and demarketing of the nation’s global competitiveness.

“The commission has therefore promoted the implementation of Alternative Crude Oil Evacuation Systems to avoid production deferment and losses and other undesirable consequences due to pipeline disruption and outages.

“This virtual means of evacuation mainly involves the utilisation of barges and trucks for the transportation of crude oil from the point of production to injection/storage points for eventual transportation to export terminals.”

In November last year, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative report disclosed that the country lost N4.3 trillion of crude oil, which had been stolen in 7,143 pipeline vandalism cases within five years.

Source- Daily Post Newspaper.