Source: THISDAY LIVE
Chineme Okafor in Abuja, Emmanuel Addeh in Yenagoa and Sylvester Idowu in Warri
The federal government’s efforts to
restore peace in the troubled oil-rich Niger Delta region recorded a
significant gain yesterday as the Niger Delta Avengers, the group that
had been responsible for recent serial attacks on oil and gas pipelines
in the region, said it was ready to discuss its grievances with the
government.
The militant group’s turning of a new
leaf, it was learnt monday, was largely due to pressure from the back
channel contact made by the federal government’s negotiating team,
headed by the Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu.
THISDAY had reported monday that the
heavy loses to the nation’s purse, arising from the violent activities
of the NDA had forced the federal government to explore the use of back
channels to reach out to the militants for dialogue.
The group’s offer of dialogue was,
however, predicated on International Oil Companies (IOCs) operating in
the region committing to send independent mediators to the dialogue,
saying that was the only way it could have confidence in talk that is
expected to chart the way forward for peace in the region.
The federal government’s team, which
also include the National Security Adviser, Maj-Gen. Babagana Monguno,
is mandated to reach out to the militants and other stakeholders in the
region and find a way to end the violence that had adversely affected
oil production output of the country, which had dwindled from 2.2m bpd
to about 1.6m bpd.Only yesterday, the Nigerian Petroleum Development
Company (NPDC), a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company
(NNPC), said it had lost N60 billion in three months, owing to the break
in its Forcados pipeline bombed by the NDA.
The NPDC’s loss is only a part of the
general loss to the nation’s overall revenue loss manifested in the
shut-in of over 800,000bpd since the NDA hostility began in February.
But in a statement by Mudock Agbinibo,
the group’s spokesperson, it said it would cease fire to enable it
discuss with the federal government’s team. It, however, demanded
absolute sincerity on the part of government, warning that it would not
allow the discussion to be turned into a political jamboree.
“We are warning this government of
President Muhammadu Buhari not to turn the essence of genuine peace talk
and dialogue to political jamboree that is prevailing now where all
manner of social media agitators and criminals have been sponsored by
the job seeking corrupt political class to save faces before the
government of the day,’’ the NDA said.
As guarantees, the group said while it
would not blow up more pipelines, it insisted that repairs to all bombed
trunk lines must be put on hold until the dialogue is over, threatening
to sink in the deep waters two large vessels belonging to the oil
companies if its conditions were disregarded.
THISDAY had reported exclusively
yesterday that the federal government, using its back channel
communication had established contact with the militants with a view to
urge them to embrace its offer of peace.
The approach had been preceded by the
government’s stand-down order given to the military that had been
deployed in the Niger Delta to enforce law and order.
The immediate gain of the approach was
the buy-in by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta
(MEND), which in a statement yesterday said it was accepting the federal
government’s offer of dialogue and invited the NDA to follow suit.
The MEND, in fact, set up a negotiating
team to be headed by a former Minister of State for Petroleum, Odein
Ajumogobia, to hold talks with the government team on the way forward
for peace to reign in the region.
NPDC Losses N60bn in Last Three Months
Meanwhile, the NPDC has lost about N60
billion oil sales revenue in the last three months due to the delay in
the repair of vandalised Forcados crude oil export line, the NNPC has
said.
The NDPC is the exploration and
production subsidiary of the NNPC. The corporation, however, disclosed
this in the April 2016 edition of its monthly operations and financial
report which was released last week.
It maintained that up till now, the
export line which was vandalised in February with 300,000bpd of crude
oil production deferred was still down, three months after.
The Shell Petroleum Development Company
of Nigeria Limited (SPDC) had on February 21, 2016, declared a force
majeure on oil liftings from Forcados following the February 14, 2016
disruption in its terminal’s subsea crude export pipeline.
But following NNPC’s disclosure in its
latest publication that NPDC was still unable to earn N20 billion
monthly oil income because of the development, in addition to the last
two publications in February and March which THISDAY reviewed, it was
discovered that NPDC may have cumulatively lost N60 billion within the
last three months.
In February, NNPC said in the report:
“The huge deficit in the month of February 2016 was due to production
shut-in occasioned by vandalism of Forcados export line. This situation
denied NPDC the opportunity to earn revenue from crude oil sales of
about N20 billion.”
In March, it stated: “The recent
declaration of force majeure by SPDC due to vandalism of 48-inch
Forcados export line resulted in production shut-in of about 300,000bpd.
This adversely impacted on the nation’s February 2016 production,
leading to a loss of about N20 billion of NPDC oil revenue.”
And in April, it explained that: “The
NPDC’s crude sale for the month is still hampered by Forcados pipeline
vandalism which continued to deny NPDC of monthly crude oil revenue of
about N20 billion.”
While Shell said in February that it was
intensifying efforts to repair the damaged pipeline, the Minister of
State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, stated in March that
repairs on the line might take up to May.
NNPC also said in the report that its leadership was already diligently addressing its key business and operational challenges.
Meanwhile, the Organisation of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC) has said the timing that Nigeria and Canada
began to see unplanned oil production outages in their oil fields is
ideal to buoy market sentiment.
OPEC, which kept its world oil demand
unchanged in its June Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) which was
released monday, reiterated that outages in Nigeria and Canada helped to
keep oil futures for May on a bullish trend.
“Oil futures surged sharply again in May
to close to $50/b on bullish market sentiment coming from supply
outages, both planned and unplanned.
“Wildfires knocked out some 700,000 b/d
of Canadian production in May, while Nigerian output slumped to levels
not seen in over a decade on the back of a wave of militant activity
coupled with some technical issues,” said the MOMR.
It then stated: “The timing of these
unplanned outages was ideal to buoy market sentiment, as they came just
ahead of a seasonal, and therefore widely expected, global period of
tightening in 3Q16.”
It noted that world oil demand growth
for 2016 remained unchanged from the previous report at 1.20 million
barrels per day (mbpd) to average 94.18mbpd.
The report said Asia, led by India, is
anticipated to be the main contributor to oil demand growth in 2016,
with the bulk of growth coming from transportation fuels, supported by
healthy vehicle sales and the low oil price environment.
It also said the forecast for non-OPEC
oil supply in 2016 remained unchanged, with a contraction of 0.74mbpd
expected to average 56.40mbpd.
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