By Kamsi Anayo, Awka
The Presidential Candidate of the Labour Mr Peter Obi has given mind boggling insight to Nigeria’s dire economic situation during his visit to cities in the country.
He said that out of all the OPEC member countries, only Nigeria was not able to meet its supply quota while other countries were angling for more (except Venezuela due to sanctions.)
He lamented that In July Nigeria did not supply 717,000 barrels per day out of its 1.8 million bpd quota.
He stated that this amounted to lost revenue of $22,227,000 daily at the rate of $110 per barrel which in a month totaled over $2.4 Billion.
The Labour Party Presidential candidate surmised that using an average exchange rate of N550, this amounted to in excess of one trillion lost in the month of July alone.
He revealed that Nigeria’s income from January to April was N1.6 trillion
while it incurred N4 trillion expenditure resulting in over N3 trillion deficit.
Every other person is asking that they increase their quota but our own quota is 1.8 million barrels a day ,and we’re not meeting it.
“Throughout the month of July on the average our daily quota was 1,800,000 thousand but every day we could not do 717,000 of what we’re supposed to do.
“Throughout the month of July, in the 31 days we lost 22,000,227 and throughout that month the average sale was about 110 so we lost 2 billion 445 million dollars…” He said
Gov Obi declared that this was not oil bunkering but “Official stealing” not just by “ship in territorial waters”.
Confirming this, a retired Nigerian American oil executive, an engineer who has served around the world and attended the Houston event, said that given what is currently going on in Nigeria only super tankers or trawlers have the capacity for the “industrial scale oil theft”.
In Washington, another Nigerian American who pleaded anonymity due to his privileged access to sensitive information claimed that during the COVID lockdown, Nigeria was still recording high amounts of fuel subsidy payments. He said that the publicly published figures were low but the actual logged and paid amounts on the records were higher.
Furthermore, he alleged that a ship bearing petroleum would dock at the port but not discharge its cargo, then sail out and return in the same week under a different name and thereby double bill subsidy payments for the same oil cargo.
US Nigeria Law Group recalls that two decades ago, a US ambassador reported flying over Niger Delta and seeing ships stealing oil in broad daylight.