The Federal Government says it has developed a roadmap to end crude oil theft in the country.
The Chairman of Crude Oil Theft and Management Committee of the National Economic Council and Governor of Imo State, Hope Uzodinma, said this while briefing newsmen shortly after a closed-door meeting with some governors in Abuja on Wednesday.
According to him, the committee was constituted in 2023 by Vice-President Kashim Shettima following growing concern over crude oil theft.
“This has reduced our oil production status drastically and has caused untold hardship to the country and almost tampered with the margin of our currency.
“Today, we met since the first meeting after the reconstitution to develop a work plan that will be used by the committee to be able to confront this case of crude oil theft headlong.
“We just developed a road map, an action plan that we will take. At this stage of preliminaries, we are trying to identify, really, the areas of leakages and the likely causes and what have made it possible.
“Our concern is to restore Nigeria’s oil production profile to either better than what it used to be or at least, where it was, which is about two million barrels,” he said.