Data from the Central Bank of Nigeria has disclosed that the combined bank borrowing to oil firms operating in the downstream and upstream subsectors of the Nigerian oil and gas industry was N5.93tn as of June 2022.
While operators in the downstream, natural gas and crude oil refining subsector owed banks N4.28tn, operators in the upstream and services subsectors were indebted to banks to the tune of N1.65tn.
This shows an increase of N250bn from the total debt of N5.68tn in December 2021.
The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria had, in March, raised the alarm over the huge losses incurred by operators in the oil and gas industry as a result of vandalism and oil theft.
The President of PENGASSAN, Festus Osifo, said between October 2021 and February 2022, over 90 per cent of crude oil pumped into the Trans National Pipeline by operators was vandalised.
This, he noted, had made Nigeria lose out on accruing more revenue in spite of the current high price of crude oil in the international market.
According to Osifo , another problem arising from vandalism was that companies were being forced to go into curtailment when the assets/export pipelines were damaged as they could not export what they produced, thereby incurring production losses.
He added that each operator in the sector loses an average of 10 days of production shut-in monthly due to vandalism.
