Govt Loses 500,000 Oil Barrels Daily - Akpana

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Daily Champion (Lagos) NEWS

August 18, 2005
Posted to the web
By Tony Ita Etim
Port Harcourt


MORE than 500,000 barrels of crude oil are lost daily to community-related problems in the Niger Delta.
Chairman of House of Representatives sub-committee on Petroleum and Community Affairs, Hon. Daemi Akpana disclosed this during a courtesy call on Governor Peter Odili of Rivers State in Port Harcourt.
The loss Akpana said was a serious problem without immediate solution in sight.
He lamented that the National Assembly was worried about the situation, hence a mandate to the sub-committee to tour states where such community-related disturbances occur frequently.
Akpanan observed that community-related programmes going on now in the area are meeting with little success, adding that the sub-committee is determined to resolve the problems for good of the people and the country.
The committee, Akpana added, had visited Bayelsa, Delta and Akwa Ibom States pointing out that the committee had as its responsibilities, to interact with people of the region and find out the problems they were having with oil companies.
Responding, Governor Odili said the loss of such volume of oil on a daily basis, was a great leak on national economic.
According to him, oil accounts for about 85 per cent of Nigeria's national income and about 90 per cent of the country's foreign exchange earnings, hence it will be madness to allow such loss unattended to.
Some oil producing communities, Odili noted, cannot produce 500,000 barrels per day, yet they are referred to as oil producing, and appealed to the subcommittee to ensure that sacred facts about the situation are utilized in the decision making process.
Odili decried the total dependence on oil and gas, and advocated need to explore other areas to enable the nation's economy boom.
He commended the House for taking the steps and assured of the cooperation of Rivers people in the process.