Nigeria has stepped up its drive to crack down on oil theft in the Niger Delta region as it aims to increase national production to 3 million barrels per day in 2025.<\/p>\n
Africa’s top oil producer, which relies on the commodity for around two-thirds of state revenue and more than 90% of foreign currency earnings, has been hit by large-scale oil theft that has curbed government finances in recent years.<\/p>\n
While the government estimates oil output at around 2.06 million barrels per day (bpd) in next year’s budget, actual production hovers around 1.8 million bpd, according to official figures.<\/p>\n
The operation to crack down on oil theft, code-named Delta Sanity (OPDS), was launched last year by the petroleum ministry and the Nigerian navy. Chief of Naval Staff Emmanuel Ogalla said OPDS has now been bolstered in a second phase with armed drones, attack helicopters, increased intelligence and other reinforcements which could push up oil production above the budget estimate to 3 million bpd.<\/p>\n
“If you look at where we were last year, when we launched this operation, we were about 1.4 million bpd. We have now gone to 1.8 million.<\/p>\n
“I believe that with all the assets that we are bringing on board, we are definitely going to meet that target and surpass it,” Ogalla said in a statement on Tuesday after the operation’s flag-off in the southern oil hub of Port Harcourt in Rivers state.<\/p>\n
Junior oil minister Heineken Lokpobiri said Nigeria’s average daily oil output was only a little above 1 million bpd when he came into office in August 2023.<\/p>\n
“Our target is to reach 3 million bpd by 2025 and we are confident that the second phase of OPDS will play a key role in achieving this milestone.”<\/p>\n
Last month, Rivers State Government donated six gunboats to the Navy to boost its operation against oil theft in the region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigeria has stepped up its drive to crack down on oil theft in the Niger Delta region as it aims to increase national production to 3 million barrels per day in 2025. Africa’s top oil producer, which relies on the commodity for around two-thirds of state revenue and more than 90% of foreign currency earnings, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14690,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,2362,27],"tags":[3646,1988,175],"class_list":["post-14689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-featured","category-west-africa","tag-delta-sanity-opds","tag-niger-delta","tag-nigeria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}