Experts Advocate Digitalisation To Curb Oil Theft

Experts person warned that unless Nigeria urgently digitalises its lipid assemblage with specialised metering systems, resources volition proceed to beryllium misappropriated, enriching a fewer portion depriving the broader population.

At a enactment forum successful Houston, Texas, Engr. Charles Deigh and Dr Oluwatoyin Joseph Gbadeyan maintained that each tube of lipid should correspond nationalist prosperity.

“This is not conscionable unfortunate—it is unacceptable. Nigeria cannot spend to fto different tube spell to waste. We request bold, transformative action,” they declared.

According to the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), crude losses person dropped from $7 cardinal per time successful 2021 to astir $700,000 regular successful 2025.

According to them, initiatives specified arsenic the Nigeria Upstream Measurement System (NUMS), the Automated Hydrocarbon Accounting System (AHAS), and provisions successful the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) mandating metering technologies are helping.

Deigh emphasised that Saudi Aramco’s occurrence successful cutting losses done a broad integer monitoring strategy wrong 4 years shows what afloat implementation could execute successful Nigeria.

The experts accent that without enforcement, these initiatives hazard becoming symbolic. “Manual reporting and anemic accountability person enabled lipid theft to thrive openly, arsenic regulators deficiency real-time oversight.”

They called for instantly deploying Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, drones, satellites, blockchain tracking, artificial intelligence, and automated metering crossed Nigeria’s lipid infrastructure to adjacent the gaps.

“Technology unsocial volition not lick the problem; the authorities indispensable determination beyond argumentation to action, ensuring integer oversight is not conscionable written into the PIA but rigorously enforced, with existent consequences for non-compliance,” Deigh and Gbadeyan stressed.

They further urged lipid companies to wantonness impermanent fixes and put successful durable monitoring systems, portion big communities indispensable clasp transparency arsenic a pathway to shared prosperity. Oil theft and inefficiency, they warned, are not inevitable but the effect of neglect and inaction.

“As crude lipid remains cardinal to Nigeria’s economy, nonaccomplishment to enactment decisively volition perpetuate losses and erode nationalist wealth. By contrast, urgent digitalisation could powerfulness growth, stability, and economical diversification.”

Experts suggest Nigeria acceptable a steadfast milestone for achieving afloat integer sum of its lipid infrastructure by December 2025.

“Such a deadline would supply absorption and crook strategies into measurable results. The flames of wasted lipid wealthiness person burned for excessively long. It is clip to extinguish them with innovation, beardown laws, precocious technology, and governmental courage. The aboriginal of Nigeria depends connected it.”