NNPC records N12.13bn profit in December, amidst growing pipeline breaches across the country – Report

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, recorded a trading surplus to the tune of N12.13bn for December 2018, according to its monthly and operations report which was released yesterday in Abuja.

The report  showed that the leap in profits by the NNPC compared to performances in the preceding months was attributed 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 stated that NPDC’s continuous revenue drive arising from recent average weekly production of 332,000 barrel per day (bpd) played a major role in the positive outlook.

According to the report, released by the NNPC spokesperson, Ndu Ughamadu, the NPDC projects a 500,000 bpd production in 2020.

In the gas sector, natural gas production increased by 12.22 per cent at 240.64 billion cubic feet compared to the output in November 2018, translating to an average daily production of 8,021.21 Million Standard Cubic feet per day, (mmsfd) the standard unit for measuring gases.

The daily average natural gas supply to gas power plants hiked by 5.36 percent to 774mmscfd, equivalent to power generation of 3,131 megawatts.

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 commercialised 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 or 729.55mmscfd compared with average gas flare rate of 9.92 percent or 777.37mmscfd for the period December 2017 to December 2018.

The NNPC report also revealed that there was an increase in the activities of vandals in December last year that pushed pipeline breaches across the country by 34 percent.

Within the period, 257 pipeline points were vandalised, out of which one pipeline point failed to be welded and six pipeline points were ruptured. The National oil firm recorded 197 breaches on its pipelines in November 2018.

The 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.

The Aba-Enugu pipeline link accounted for seven percent, with other locations accounting for the remaining 11 percent of the pipeline breaks.

The NNPC stated that 1.8 billion litres of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, popularly known as petroleum, translating to 58.17 million litres per day were supplied in the month under review.

Overall, during the month, 1.96 billion litres of refined products were distributed and sold by the NNPC downstream subsidiary, Petroleum Products Marketing Company, PPMC, compared with 1.09 billion litres in the market in November 2018.

This comprised 1.94 billion litres of PMS, 0.007 billion litres of kerosene and 0.014 billion litres of diesel. Total sale of refined 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, N241.46bn was made on the sale of refined products by PPMC in December 2018, compared to N146.56bn sales in November 2018.

Total revenue generated from the sales of refined products for the period December 2017 to December 2018 stood at N2.78tn, with PMS contributing about 89.63 percent of the total sales with a value of N2.49bn.