Crude cartel controls $8,777 of GDP, say oil engineers

• Employ 98,435 workers

The crude theft cartel controls Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $8,777 as against the National Par Capital GDP of $1,200, New Telegraph has learnt. Crude pilfering, which is growing at a geometric ratio in Nigeria, also controls direct employment of 98,435, a data released by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) has revealed. President, SPE, Nigeria Council, Emeka Ene, disclosed these at the Nigeria Gas Association (NGA) Business forum in Lagos.

GDP is the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period, though it is usually calculated on an annual basis. Just last week, President Muhammadu Buhari disclosed that one million barrels of crude, which sold at an average price of $98 per barrel in 2014, was stolen by some former ministers.

However, the SPE president hinted on the sideline of the NGA Forum that the crude theft industry has a total dependants of 492,175 people, stressing that “the nefarious act leads to expansion and mainstreaming of a rogue economy.” Ene, who earlier delivered a paper entitled: “Political economy and environmental degradation resulting from oil theft,” at the confab, said that crude theft “is a threat to industry and national security while it constitutes to further degradation of environment and loss of livelihood.” The social implication of this act, Ene said, is that it heightens destruction of socio and traditional fabric and values and contributes to political instability at local government area (LGA) level.

President Muhammadu Buhari had, last Wednesday, in the Nigerian Embassy in Washington District of Columbia, United States of America, indicated his readiness to end the crude theft in Nigeria. He said that his government was examining pieces of evidences that would lead to the arrest and prosecution of some former ministers and other government officials for stealing Nigeria’s crude oil. Buhari added that it would take at least 18 months to revive the economy. Some of the affected officials were, according to Buhari, involved in illegal sale and diversion of crude oil monies belonging to the Federal Government to multiple private accounts abroad. He said: “We are now looking for evidences of shipping some of our crude, their destinations and where and which accounts they were paid and in which country.

When we get as much as we can get as soon as possible, we will approach those countries to freeze those accounts and go to court, prosecute those people and let the accounts be taken to Nigeria. “The amount of money is mind-burgling, but we have started getting documents. We have started getting documents where some of the senior people in government, former ministers, some of them had as much as five accounts and were moving about one million barrels per day on their own,” the president said.