Yemisi Izuora
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC has raised serious concerns over rise in pipeline Vandalisation across the country, as it disclosed that activities of vandals pushed pipeline breaches by 34 per cent.
In a statement yesterday by NNPC Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Mr. Ndu Ughamadu, 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 vandalized, out of which one pipeline point failed to be welded and six pipeline points were ruptured.
The report disclosed that the Corporation 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 per cent, 26 per cent and 22 per cent of the vandalized points respectively.
Aba-Enugu pipeline link accounted for seven per cent, with other locations accounting for the remaining 11 per cent 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 queue across the Nation.
The release disclosed that 1.80billion litres of PMS, translating to 58.17m liters/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 1.09billion litres in the market in the November 2018.
This comprised 1.94 billion litres of PMS, 0.0070 billion litres of kerosene and 0.014billion litres of diesel. Total sale of white products for the period, December 2017 to December 2018, stood at 21.84billion litres and PMS accounted for 20.17billion litres or 92.36 per cent.
In terms of value, ₦241.46billion was made on the sale of white products by PPMC in December 2018, compared to ₦146.56billion sales in the November 2018.
Total revenues generated from the sales of white products for the period December 2017 to December 2018 stood at ₦2,778.32billion, with PMS contributing about 89.63 per cent of the total sales with a value of ₦2,490billion.
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 ₦12.13billion 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 per cent 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 240.59 bcf of gas supplied in December 2018, a total of 151.13bcf of gas was commercialized, consisting of 38.61bcf and 112.52bcf for the domestic and export market respectively.
This translates to a total supply of 1,245.48 mmscfd of gas to the domestic market and 3,748.47 mmscfd of gas supplied to the export market for the month, implying that 62.61 per cent of the average daily gas produced was commercialized while the balance of 37.39 per cent was re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared.
Gas flare rate was 9.15 per cent for the month under review i.e. 729.55mmscfd compared with average Gas flare rate of 9.92 per cent i.e. 777.37mmscfd for the period December 2017 to December 2018.