The Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative has said Nigeria lost N851.84 billion ($2.78bn) to oil theft and pipeline sabotage in 2019.

NEITI said this in its latest oil and gas industry audit report stating that it arrived at the estimate after using an average price of $65.61 per barrel and an average exchange rate of N306.42/$ .

It further noted that there was a significant reduction of 21 percent from 2018, a loss of 53.28 million barrels.

Losses such as these are recorded by companies whose crude volumes are carried through pipelines easily compromised by saboteurs.

The report also stated that some oil terminals –Aja operated by Bayelsa Oil,Asaramatoru and Oyo managed by Prime and Allied/CAMAC–recorded no production.

Nigeria earned a total of N10.49tn ($34.22bn) from crude oil and gas sales. This was a marginal 4.88 per cent increase from 2018 revenues of N9.99tn ($32.63bn).

The total crude oil production recorded was 735.24 million barrels, a 4.87percent increase from 701.10 million barrels reported in 2018.

A total of N2.145tn ($7.011bn) was the domestic sales proceeds in 2019 from 107.24 million barrels of crude oil. This was 0.36 per cent lower than the domestic crude sales of 107.63 million barrels in 2018.