Wanted: One (1) big oil boom – just not like this
Nigerian authorities estimate that the country loses between 200,000 and 400,000 barrels of oil a day because of attacks on pipelines.
A crude oil pipeline that transports as much as 245,000 barrels a day from Nigeria’s Rivers State was forced to close after a section of it exploded on Tuesday. The cause of the explosion is still unknown, but police have arrested two people in connection with the incident.
The oil that the shuttered Trans-Niger carries each day is worth about $14-million, and its continued closure could cost Nigeria up to $440-million a month, Africa Report estimates. It moves up to 15% of Nigeria’s oil exports. Leaked oil from the explosion also poses a serious environmental disaster in the area.
But this sort of incident is not very unusual. Dozens of attacks on pipelines occur in Nigeria each year. Some are by militant groups and others by people simply looking to steal the oil.
Nigerian authorities estimate that the country loses between 200,000 and 400,000 barrels of oil a day because of such attacks. The losses have been a significant factor in Nigeria’s struggle to meet its oil export targets. They reached an all-time high of 1.7-million barrels a day last year but the government would like to see them rise to about 2.7-million.
In Rivers State, the blast took place amid a political row between cabinet minister Nyesom Wike and local governor Sim Fabura.
In what appears to be part of a wider power contest between the federal government and state authorities, Wike has worked with local legislators to impeach Fabura, who is popular in the state. Some groups allied with Fabura had threatened to attack oil infrastructure in the area, to protest the federal government’s meddling.
The Trans-Niger pipeline used to be run by the British oil giant Shell, but repeated security breaches on its on-shore oil operations have seen it sell them off to focus on offshore oil.
Nigeria always has a lot going on with it