- Nigeria Reports 3.33 million Barrels of Crude Theft in 2025
Nigeria recorded 3.33 million barrels of crude oil theft in 2025, with about two-thirds of the reported losses concentrated in the final quarter, a late-year surge that puts pressure on the country’s efforts to lift production and strengthen oil revenues.
The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission’s annual report shows a sharp quarterly divergence. Reported theft was 896,471 barrels in the first quarter, while the second quarter recorded a negative 200,400 barrels following a reconciliation of volumes.
Losses reached 440,434 barrels in the third quarter before rising to 2.19 million barrels in the fourth. That final-quarter figure represented about 65.80 per cent of the annual net total.
The scale of the fourth-quarter increase is the most striking feature of the data. It was almost five times the third-quarter figure and reversed the apparent improvement implied by the negative second-quarter entry.
The commission described that figure as an excess volume identified during reconciliation. The annual total, therefore, combines reported quarterly theft with a negative adjustment, a methodology distinction that matters when comparing the figures over time.
“The fourth quarter recorded 2.19 million barrels, the highest quarterly volume of the year,” the report says. The concentration raises questions about whether the rise reflected a deterioration in security, changes in measurement and reporting, or both.
The published figures establish the scale and timing of reported losses, but further detail would help explain what drove the sharp year-end movement.
The theft data come as Nigeria seeks to raise production to meet fiscal and energy-sector ambitions. The 2026 budget is based on crude production of 1.84 million barrels a day and an oil price benchmark of US$64.85 a barrel. Yet the production figure cited for the period since July 2026 averaged 1.505 million barrels a day, about 18.21 per cent below the budget target.
The comparison underlines the gap between the planned production path and recent output, although theft is only one factor affecting production.
Nigeria produced 541.08 million barrels of crude oil and blended condensate in 2025, according to the report’s quarterly figures. Production was relatively steady through the year, ranging from 132.70 million barrels in the first quarter to 137.69 million in the second, before easing to 133.23 million in the fourth.
A further 48.52 million barrels of unblended condensate were recorded. These figures show the scale of the sector, but they do not erase the lost barrels or establish how much revenue the stolen crude would have generated.
The financial consequences extend beyond the market value of oil that is not captured. Unrecovered crude can mean reduced export earnings, lower potential government receipts and less feedstock available to domestic refineries.
But the reported 3.33 million barrels should not be translated into a precise revenue loss without assumptions about the crude grade, price, recoverability, ownership and fiscal terms. The volume is a warning signal; a credible valuation requires those additional details.
The commission’s report also records plans to expand upstream capacity. It processed 75 field development plan applications in 2025, approved 48 and rejected 10, while 17 remained under review at year-end.
The approved plans are expected to develop around 1.75 billion barrels of oil reserves and could add approximately 743,830 barrels a day of oil production capacity, with first oil projected between 2026 and 2030. These are project expectations, not production already delivered.
That distinction is central to Nigeria’s oil outlook. Approving projects can enlarge future capacity, but production depends on investment, timely construction, operational performance, export infrastructure and security.
A pipeline or production facility exposed to theft and sabotage can undermine the value of new investment before the country captures the resulting revenue.
The year-end concentration also challenges any assumption that progress in one period guarantees lasting improvement. Even if earlier interventions reduced losses, the fourth-quarter figure indicates that monitoring and enforcement must remain effective across the full production and evacuation chain.
Security measures need to protect wells and pipelines, but the problem also involves metering, transport, reconciliation and accountability for volumes moving from production sites to their destinations.
The reported numbers invite closer scrutiny of how losses are detected and reconciled. A negative theft figure in one quarter may reflect the correction of earlier estimates or previously unaccounted volumes, rather than a literal absence of theft.
Clear explanations of the data methodology would help policymakers and investors distinguish between physical losses, accounting adjustments and changes in reporting coverage.
That transparency matters because the theft figure is used to assess the performance of security and production policies. If quarterly data are difficult to compare, decision-makers may struggle to identify where interventions are working and where vulnerabilities persist.
More frequent, reconciled reporting, with explanations for adjustments, would make the annual trend more useful for accountability and planning.
Nigeria’s ambition to expand production is not contradicted by the approval of new field plans, but it cannot rest on future capacity alone. The 2025 figures show that the country produced more than half a billion barrels of crude and blended condensate while still recording millions of barrels in theft. The 2026 target, meanwhile, remains above the cited recent production average.
The policy test is whether Nigeria can convert planned capacity into secure, saleable production and reliable public revenue.
That requires more than approving projects or recording security spending: it requires measurable reductions in losses, transparent reconciliation of volumes and evidence that new output reaches export terminals or domestic refineries. The late-year theft surge makes that test harder to defer.
