Regina Otokpa 
The Commission Chief Executive (CCE) of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), Engr. Gbenga Komolafe, has called for restraint and dialogue in the ongoing dispute between the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) and the Dangote Group over recent staff sackings and alleged labour rights violations.
Komolafe, who made the appeal during an interview on Arise Television, urged both parties and the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) to find a common ground and resolve their differences without disrupting energy supply across the country.
“Regardless of the fact that the issues involved are purely mid and downstream affairs, our take is that parties should refrain from anything that will cause disruption in energy supply in the country. We believe that the issues involved are issues that parties can actually sit down, discuss, and reach an amicable solution for the good of the country,” he said.
Speaking further, the CCE highlighted the significant reduction in the monetary value of oil losses, attributing the improvement to new strategies implemented by the NUPRC. He noted that the express directive of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to eliminate oil losses using both kinetic and non-kinetic approaches has yielded positive results.
Komolafe emphasised the importance of protecting the integrity of Nigeria’s oil and gas sector, warning that negative narratives could deter potential investors. According to him, the directives to security agencies and the Commission have helped reduce crude oil losses by about 90 per cent between 2021 and 2025.
He explained that a combination of kinetic and non-kinetic measures had been adopted to curb oil theft. For the non-kinetic method, the Commission introduced two pioneering regulations: the Upstream Measurement Regulation and the Advanced Cargo Declaration Regulation, designed to complement the efforts of security agencies.
“These are pioneering initiatives in Nigeria’s over 70 years of oil and gas exploration and development. For the first time, Nigeria now has regulations that track every molecule of crude oil loaded from its terminals to the discharge point,” Komolafe stated.
He added that the regulations are being implemented in two phases. The first phase involves the establishment of a statutory regulatory framework and the Engineering Metering Audit, which has received Federal Executive Council approval.
In a statement signed by NUPRC’s Head of Media and Strategic Communication, Eniola Akinkuotu, on Sunday, Komolafe explained that it was long overdue to carry out an engineering integrity assessment of all the metering facilities that have been operating for decades.
“In the past, international oil companies were the ones informing Nigerians of the quantities of oil exported. We want to change that trajectory. Our objective is to ensure that we get that done on a real-time basis. This is where we are going in terms of production reporting,” he said.
The first phase, which covers the integrity checks of metering devices, has been conducted in almost 700 upstream points.
On the Advanced Cargo Declaration Regulation, Komolafe explained that the goal is to ensure digital, real-time tracking of every barrel of crude loaded from Nigeria’s terminals up to the discharge point.
“We want to track every barrel of crude that is loaded in a tanker so that if a tanker loads one million barrels of crude and ends up discharging 1.2 million barrels of crude, we will instantly be able to flag it, because the system will detect that the tanker is discharging above the permitted volume,” he said.
