From Bloomberg 

Revenue earned by Nigeria this year may be as much as $12 billion short of budget estimates as theft of crude and output disruptions persist in the oil-rich Niger River delta, Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said.

The government will draw down its oil savings in the Excess Crude Account to compensate for the drop in revenue to keep the budget deficit under control, Okonjo-Iweala said in an interview yesterday in Abuja, the capital.

With a 2013 budget based on a daily output of 2.53 million barrels and an oil price of $79 a barrel, Africa’s biggest oil producer expected revenue of almost $80 billion from exports. In the first half of the year, oil receipts amounted to $28.2 billion, more than $7 billion below the estimate, according to central bank figures.

“What is amazing now is that we’ve had this quantity of shock and we were able to weather it,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “You can say theft, but it’s still a quantity shock.”

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country of more than 160 million people, depends on crude exports for about 80 percent of government revenue and 95 percent of export income. Criminal gangs tapping oil from pipelines for illegal sale have posed the biggest threat to output since a government amnesty in 2009 reduced armed attacks led by rebels fighting for greater control of the region’s resources.

The revenue shortfall due to output disruptions will probably be between $6 billion and $12 billion, said Bright Okogu, director of the Budget Office, who sat in on the interview with the finance minister.

The government saves the balance of oil revenue above the budgeted price in the Excess Crude Account, which had a balance of just under $5 billion, down from about $9 billion at the beginning of the year, according to the minister.

Read more at Bloomberg.