The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has decried activities of vandals whose deeds in December last year pushed pipeline breaches across Nigeria up by a whopping 34 percentage point.
Ndu Ughamadu, NNPC’s group general manager, group public affairs, in a statement on Sunday said the upward swing in the breaches was captured in the corporation’s Monthly Financial and Operations Report for December 2018, explaining that within the period, 257 pipeline points were vandalised, out of which one pipeline point failed to be welded and six pipeline points were ruptured.
NNPC affirmed further that it recorded 197 breaches on it pipelines in November last year.
Ibadan-Ilorin, Mosimi-Ibadan, and Atlas Cove-Mosimi network accounted for 90, 69 and 57 compromised points, respectively, or approximately 34 percent, 26 percent and 22 percent of the vandalised points, respectively.
Aba-Enugu pipeline link accounted for 7 percent, with other locations accounting for the remaining 11 percent of the pipeline breaks.
Despite the activities of the pipeline marauders, the NNPC report said the corporation continued to diligently monitor the daily stock of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), otherwise called petrol, to achieve smooth distribution of petroleum products and zero fuel queues across the nation.
The release disclosed that 1.80 billion litres of PMS, translating to 58.17m litres/day were supplied for the month.
Overall, during the month under review, 1.96 billion litres of white products were distributed and sold by NNPC Downstream subsidiary, Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC), compared with 1.09 billion litres in the market in the November 2018.
This comprised 1.94 billion litres of PMS, 0.0070 billion litres of kerosene and 0.014 billion litres of diesel. Total sale of white products for the period, December 2017 to December 2018, stood at 21.84 billion litres and PMS accounted for 20.17 billion litres or 92.36 percent.
In terms of value, N241.46 billion was made on the sale of white products by PPMC in December 2018, compared with N146.56 billion sales in the November 2018.
Total revenues generated from the sales of white products for the period December 2017 to December 2018 stood at N2,778.32 billion, with PMS contributing about 89.63 percent of the total sales with a value of N2,490 billion.
The NNPC said that despite the disturbing reports of breaches on its assets, the corporation on the whole posted a positive outlook in December 2019.
The Monthly Financial and Operations Report said NNPC posted trading surplus of N12.13 billion in December last year, a leap from recent past performances.
The report attributed the positive swing to higher revenue numbers posted by the corporation’s Upstream subsidiary, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC).
The 41st edition of the NNPC monthly report cited NPDC’s continuous revenue drive arising from recent average weekly production of 332,000bpd as the main driver of the positive outlook. The NPDC targets 500,000bpd production in 2020.
In the gas sector, natural gas production increased by 12.22 percent at 240.64 billion cubic feet compared to output in November 2018, translating to an average daily production of 8,021.21mmscfd. The daily average natural gas supply to gas power plants hiked by 5.36 per cent to 774mmscfd, equivalent to power generation of 3,131MW.
Out of the 240.59bcf of gas supplied in December 2018, a total of 151.13bcf of gas was commercialised, consisting of 38.61bcf and 112.52bcf for the domestic and export market, respectively.
This translates to a total supply of 1,245.48mmscfd of gas to the domestic market and 3,748.47mmscfd of gas supplied to the export market for the month, implying that 62.61 percent of the average daily gas produced was commercialized while the balance of 37.39 percent was re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared.
Gas flare rate was 9.15 percent for the month under review i.e. 729.55mmscfd compared with average gas flare rate of 9.92 percent i.e. 777.37mmscfd for the period December 2017 to December 2018.
