Nigeria
ranks fourth in the league of countries who contribute to global oil
supply outages, estimates from analysts at Deutsche Bank and other
shipping and industry sources have shown. This is even as the country
loses more than 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil to vandalism,
crude oil theft and spills.
Total
global outages amount to 3.15 million bpd, about 3.5 percent of daily
world oil demand of 90 million bpd, according to the estimates.
Nigeria,
Africa’s top oil producer, has had to grapple with upsurge in crude oil
thefts, resulting in frequent production shutdowns and massive oil
leakages in recent time.
Only
recently, Italian oil major Eni lifted a force majeure it imposed on
its Nigerian Brass River crude oil production in March.
The
company had in August said oil theft, sabotage and adverse natural
events such as flooding have hurt its operations in Nigeria, amounting
to a daily loss of 30,000 barrels of oil equivalent in the first half of
the year, that’s equivalent to 2 percent of the company’s overall
production in the period.
The
analysis shows Libya as the country with the biggest outages, losing
1.2 million bpd due to strikes and protests, followed by Iran with 1.1
million bpd as a result of the US and European sanctions over nuclear
programme.
In
Syria, outages amount to 300,000bpd caused by civil war and Iraq lost
200,000bpd due to disruption to Northern pipeline. The estimates,
compiled by Reuters, show South Sudan as having the least supply outages
with 150,000bpd occasioned by political tension with Sudan.
Crude
oil theft has continued to thwart Nigeria from coming near the 2.53
million bpd estimate in the 2013 budget, with huge revenue losses
estimated at over $1.23 billion (N190bn) in the first quarter, according
to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company.
Nigeria,
which earns more than 90 percent of its foreign exchange and about 80
percent of government revenue from its oil industry, has seen decline in
production and revenue in recent times.
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