New Telegraph

NNPC, EFCC, DSS, others tighten noose on oil thieves

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is collaborating with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Department of State Services (DSS), Nigeria Police Force (NPF), Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) and other relevant downstream and upstream stakeholders in the petroleum industry to curb the twin menace of petroleum product smuggling and crude oil theft, which are negatively impacting the nation’s economy. Speaking at a stakeholders’ meeting at the NNPC Towers, Abuja, the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari, said the move was at the instance of President Muhammadu Buhari, who mandated the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, the NNPC, the EFCC and all other security agencies to do everything to stop crude oil theft and illicit truck-out of petroleum products.

He urged all industry stakeholders to collaborate with the corporation to ensure that the daily national petroleum product consumption, which shot up to 102million litres in the month of May, is brought down to realistic level of around 60 million litres, stressing that it was obvious to all that that volume of premium motor spirit (PMS) was not consumed by Nigerians alone.

“We all agree that smuggling is not a business that should be condoned because even for deregulated petroleum products it brings extra cost burden on this country both in terms of safety and security of supply and in securing of foreign exchange. “It even constitutes more burden to this country when the product involved is a regulated product like PMS,” Mallam Kyari submitted. The GMD explained that with the increasing price of crude oil at the global market and the OPEC+ production cuts, the country could not afford to shoulder the cost of smuggling.

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