Crude thefts: CSO want meters installed on oil well heads

 As part of measures to eradicate crude theft and oil losses, the Publish What You Pay Nigeria (PWYP) has call for the installation of meters at the country’s oil well heads.

This is contained in a communique of a two-day national multi-stakeholders workshop in Abuja and jointly signed by the national coordinator of PWYP Emeka Ononamadu and a representative of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) Dr. Mina Ogbanga.

Participants at the forum while specifically calling for the installation of meters on oil-well heads also ask for the introduction of other effective and well-organized mechanisms to determine the quantity of crude oil produced in Nigeria at all times.

“There is need to work towards ensuring project disclosure, volume and value of oil sold. It is important to reconcile the quantity lifted, the revenue collected and the income so that citizens will get value for their natural resources,” the communique said.

Nigeria has faced the challenge of knowing the volume of oil it produces daily, as a result of lack of consensus on where the operating companies should install metering infrastructure.

While some operators prefer the equipment at the well-heads in oil fields, the multi-national oil companies mostly want the meters at the oil tank farms and export terminals, arguing that oil collected at the production fields were often mixed with water, sand and other residual matters that would make it difficult to determine the volume of oil there.

“The system and institutions in place for extractive sector exploration, production, control and monitoring purposes in Nigeria have proven to be inadequate, ineffective and porous, resulting in preventable leakages and revenue losses to the country,” it said.

On the effort to establish a standard fiscal, legal and regulatory framework for the industry, the group acknowledged the progress by the National Assembly in recent times in passing the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill, PIGB, into law.

The forum also decried the weak and not-inclusion of the civil society organizations (CSOs), in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) process in Nigeria.