Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL has described vandalisation of over 5,000 kilometers of oil pipelines by vandals in the country as a national calamity.

Chief Executive Officer of the company, Mele Kyari who spoke during interactive session with the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), however, assured Nigerians that the nation’s four oil refineries would be made functional very soon.

Problem of oil pipeline vandalism according to him, has been bedeviling the sector over the decades as the company had not been able to pump oil through pipeline from Warri to Benin within the last 22 years.

“Over 5,000 kilometers oil pipelines  in the country  are not working. As a result of pipeline vandalism, 10million litres of oil was lost from volume pumped from Aba to Enugu at a time.

“The company has been unable to pump oil from Warri to Benin within the last 22 years and cannot connect to Ore.

“There is no amount of security measures that had not been taken to curb the crime  without success, which to us in NNPCL, is substantially a national calamity,” Kyari stressed.

He, however, said as a way out, the company is embarking on massive replacement of the pipelines which aside being vandalised , are old and obsolete.

The NNPCL boss explained further to the committee that deregulation of the oil sector and in particular, subsidy removal carried out in May this year has turned the company into a profitable one.

According to him, before deregulation in 2018, the company made loss of N802billion but after deregulation in 2021, made excess profit of N687billion.

He added that while 67million litres of oil was consumed per day during the era of subsidy regime, average of 55million litres are being consumed on daily basis now, just as the problem of smuggling the product across border, has become things of the past.

Chairman of the committee, Senator Ifeanyi Ubah (APC Anambra South) and all the members responded separately to submissions made by the NNPCL boss that proper dissection of challenges facing the sector would be better made in a retreat.

But Senator Seriake Dickson (PDP Bayelsa West) told Kyari to look critically into surveillance security contract the company is operating as regards non inclusion of some oil producing areas.

He said: “Some  local governments in Bayelsa State like Sagbama where I come from, are not covered by the contract with attendant consequence.”