Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) has described as misleading allegations of involvement in oil theft at its Bonny Crude Export Terminal.
Report between 2016-2018 on a 2 million barrels crude deficit at the Bonny terminal operated by Shell had caused a dispute amongst several oil firms that use the terminal.
Aiteo,an Indigenous oil firm had claimed that Shell shortchanged it of 1,022,029 barrels of crude while using the Bonny Crude Export Terminal between 2016-2018.
Aiteo an Exploration and Production company, acquired OML 29 for$2.4 billion following SPDC’s 2015 divestment of its 45 percent stake from the asset
OML 29 has the capacity to lift up to 180,000 barrels of crude per day from oil fields in Bayelsa and Rivers to the Bonny terminal
However,in a statement on Saturday, SPDC’S Media Relations Manager, Bamidele Odugbesan dismissed the allegation as factually incorrect.
Odugbesan said “the issue relates to the directive by the Department of Petroleum Resources to SPDC as operator of the Bonny Oil and Gas Terminal,an asset belonging to the SPDC Joint Venture to implement a crude re- allocation programme between injectors into the SPDC JV’s Trans Niger Pipeline and injectors into the NCTL.
” Crude allocation review and re- allocation is a normal industry practice to re- allocate previous provisional allocated volumes under the directive and supervision of DPR, and that is not an exercise resulting from crude diversion, underreporting oe theft at the terminal adding that crude oil production metering and allocation are subject to specific guidelines issued by the industry regulators, DPR,SPDC strictly adheres to these guidelines and implementation is regularly verified by the regulators” he said
