The Federal Government has decided to stop the present practice where Nigeria depends on operators for production data to determine daily volume and oil earnings.
On Monday, 5th September, the Federal Government, through the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), said it would commence the installation of its own flow meters on oil production facilities and pipelines in the upstream sector.
Hitherto , the nation has always depended on data from oil producing firms, but the recent approval by President Muhammadu Buhari is expected to save the nation billions of dollars lost through inaccurate meters and dependence on oil companies for data.
The NUPRC Chief Executive Officer, Gbenga Komolafe, noted that the nation relies on production data from operators, rather than the regulator sourcing its own data from its own installed meters.
This confirms claims that some oil producing firms may have been shortchanging the country for many years, just as Komolafe noted that earnings lost to such activities run into billions of dollars.
By depending on operators’ data, Nigeria only does not know how much is being produced from its reserves, it has also lost billions of dollars in potential revenue from under-reported volumes.
It would be recalled that some operators are still in court over inaccuracies bordering on contradictory reported volumes from flow meters in the same export pipeline.
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