The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has lost 150,000 barrels of crude due to an attack on its Trans Niger Pipeline in Ogoniland yesterday.
Maikanti Baru, group managing director, NNPC, said the attack  will affect the Corporation’s  plan to sustain last week’s record of 2.2 million barrels  production per day. “Unfortunately, we have not been able to sustain it because of challenges. As I am talking to you this morning, the Trans Niger pipeline has been breached in Ogoniland and that is 150,000 barrels of oil has been locked up daily. That has been fairly an issue in that area and we hope we can continue at that level,” Baru told reporters at the on-going extra-ordinary session of the council of ministers of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organisation, APPO, in Abuja.
Yemi Osinbajo, Acting President, in his opening remarks, urged African oil producing countries to track the funding of terrorists with oil funds. He lamented that there was a global threat to peace from the funding of terrorist groups and other sources of violence and conflicts that have become a threat to the security and safety of member states.
He urged member-states to build up a data base that will track every molecule of oil produced in the region, believing that the measure will  bring about accountability, transparency and global cooperation.
“Permit me to mention a matter of immediate concern. Around the world today, we are increasingly seeing crude oil, often of untraceable origins, funding the activities of terrorists groups and other purveyors of violence and conflicts. Many of these groups constitute a threat or a potential threat to the safety and security to  our member-states. APPO reforms, therefore, needs to build the capacity to maintain a reliable statistical database and to deploy technology to track every molecule of crude oil extracted from our territories,” said Osinbajo.
He added that, “This is an important step, not only for global security, but also for fiscal transparency, accountability and of course, the required levels of international collaboration and cooperation that an organisation like APPO is well-placed to muster.”
According the Acting President, the centrality of the hydrocarbon industry to the economies of the continent  is self-evident, as it is reflected in the revenue inflows that accounts for a significant percentage of their budget. He ecplained that this has become one, if not the primary, sub-structure upon which economic planning is based and on which economic development and growth are generated.