A group, Publish-What-You-Pay Nigeria, PWYP, has called on regulatory authorities to install meters at the country’s oil well heads, for proper assessment of oil production in Nigeria.
The call for installation of oil heads has grown with quest for information on the volume of crude produced in the country daily. There is also a lack of consensus on where to install the meters.
While some operators support the installation of the facility at the well-heads in oil fields, the multi-national oil companies prefer the meters at the oil tank farms and export terminals.
The oil companies argue that oil collected at the production fields were often mixed with water, sand and other residual matters that would make it difficult to determine the volume of oil there.
They hold that measuring at the oil terminals would save them huge losses from the high incidence of pipeline vandalism and crude oil theft in the Niger Delta region in recent times.
However, rising from a two-day national multi-stakeholders workshop in Abuja, the PWYP Nigeria said regulatory authorities should install the meters at the oil wellheads.
Participants said this arrangement, along with the introduction of other effective and well-organised operational mechanisms, would help the country determine the quantity of crude produced.
In a communique signed by the National Coordinator of the goup, Emeka Ononamadu and Representative of Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, Mina Ogbanga, it stated that the move would strengthen transparency and accountability in the extractive industry in the country.
They said “The system and institutions in place for extractive sector exploration, production, control and monitoring purposes in Nigeria have proven to be inadequate, ineffective and porous, resulting in preventable leakages and revenue losses to the country”.
