NNPC records N15.04b trade surplus in January

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has a trade surplus of N15.04billion for January, an increase of 24 per cent over the N12.13 billion surplus posted by the corporation in December 2018.

NNPC Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Mr. Ndu Ughamadu, in a release yesterday in Abuja, stated that details of the report contained in the January 2019 edition of the corporation’s Monthly Financial and Operations Report (MFPR), attributed the financial position to the improved performance of NNPC’s upstream subsidiary, Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC).

The report submitted that NPDC’s sustained revenue drive, evident from recent average weekly production of 332,000 barrels of Crude Oil per day, had made achieving 500,000bpd production by 2020 plausible.

The NPDC’s position was different from the high expenditure levels posted by two other entities of NNPC, the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC) and Duke Oil, although both ended the month with profit.

n terms of sales and remittance of crude oil and gas proceeds, the corporation announced total export receipts of $381.70 million in the month under review as against $345.68 million posted in December 2018.

A breakdown of the numbers indicated that contributions from crude oil amounted to $269.43 million, while Gas and miscellaneous receipts stood at $111.75 and $0.52 million respectively.

Within the period under focus, NNPC transferred N153.01 billion into the Federation Account, while cumulatively, from January 2018 to January 2019, Federation and JV received N905.45 billion and N658.66 billion respectively, under the column of Naira Payments to the Federation Accounts.

In the downstream operations, 1,998.61 million litres of petrol was supplied into the country through the Direct-Sale-Direct-Purchase (DSDP) crude-for-product arrangement in January 2019.  The number is slightly higher than the 1,789.20million litres of petrol supplied in the month of December 2018.

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The 42 edition of the NNPC MFOR recorded 230 hacked pipeline points, leaving only two ruptured, marking an 11 per cent improvement from the 264 vandalised points posted in December 2018.

A breakdown showed that Mosimi-Ibadan, Ibadan-Ilorin and Aba-Enugu pipelines accounted for 67, 62 and 30 points respectively, which translated to 29 per cent, 27 per cent and 13 per cent of the vandalized points, respectively.

The Warri-River Niger axis accounted for 10 per cent and other locations accounted for the remaining 21 per cent of the pipeline breaks.

In the gas sector, natural gas production increased by 2.22 per cent at 245.83billion cubic feet compared to output in December 2018, translating to an average production of 8,194.34 million standard cubic feet of gas per day (mmscfd).

Out of the volume supplied in January 2019, a total of 151.50bcf of gas was commercialized, consisting of 38.03BCF and 113.47 BCF for the domestic and export market respectively. The figure translates to a total supply of 1,226.83 mmscfd of Gas to the domestic market and 3,780.24 mmscfd of gas supplied to the export market for the month.

This implies that that 61.73 per cent of the average daily Gas produced was commercialized, while the balance of 38.27 per cent was re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared.

The gas flare rate was 7.52 per cent for the month under review, translating to 610.07mmscfd compared with average gas flare rate of 9.76 per cent, that is 770.31 mmscfd for the period January 2018 to January 2019.