The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) has begun a nationwide protest rally over the rising crude oil theft, stating that the country loses over a million dollar (about N426.1 billion) daily to the menace.
At a press briefing in Abuja on Wednesday, the National President of PENGASSAN and President, Trade Union Congress (TUC), Comrade Festus Osifo, said: “The OPEC quota for Nigeria is somewhere above 1.8m barrels per day but today we struggle to produce just barely a million and companies are shutting down because they cannot feed into the pipeline because of oil theft.”
He said the menace has affected the job security of his members and that Nigeria loses huge amounts of money daily for 600m barrels at the $100 dollar price and at the CBN official exchange rate. The 600m barrels is worth $60 billion and at a CBN N435/$ rate, it is N25.556 trillion crude oil revenue loss.
“The reason we are doing this is that a lot of companies are shutting in production and when you shut in a barrel, you shut in $100 and if you shut in $10m barrels, that is over a million-dollar every day and some companies shut over 40m barrels daily.
“Agip has shut down production at land locations, Addax has shut down OML124, Total E&P had challenges in OML58 since January and they drill oil and associated gas, put the oil back into the well and export only gas; SPDC (Shell) is worst hit because they have shut down most wells,” Osifo explained.
PENGASSAN is holding the rally in the four zones and in Abuja themed, ‘Chasing the oil vandals out of business’.
“If After this and there is no progress, we may be forced to withdraw our workforce from the producing companies,” the union leader declared.
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