The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited claims to have 1.805 billion liters of gasoline on hand despite shortages in the local market. Malam Garbadeen Muhammad, its spokesperson, said on Monday in Abuja that the amount of gasoline in storage will last for 30 days.
He stated that although one billion litres of the liquid were still in the vessels, 805,35 million litres were stored in depots around the country. He continued by saying that NNPC Ltd. has put in place a solid strategy for the delivery of gasoline from mid-February to March 2023 in an effort to assure a constant supply.
“An additional petrol supply of 884 million litres is also expected by Feb. 28. For March 2023, a total of 2.3 billion litres of petrol is expected, while about 2.5 billion litres, equivalent to 42 days sufficiency, will be the closing stock for the month,’’ Muhammad stated.
In a related incident, Chief Timipre Sylva, Minister of State Petroleum Resources, blamed pipeline vandalism, theft, and deteriorated infrastructure for the loss of income from oil output.
The minister added in a statement released on Monday by his Senior Advisor for Media and Communications, Horatius Egua, that the Federal Government was committed to reversing the trend despite the difficulties.
According to Sylva, the Federal Government is committed to reversing the trend by increasing security and investments along the main oil and gas pipelines in the Niger Delta area.
He said that, in contrast to assertions that measurement errors account for around 40% of the quantities of crude oil losses, the main causes of crude oil losses were theft, pipeline vandalism, and consequent production delays.
“It is a known fact that the major losses of crude oil in the country have been through theft and destruction of oil pipelines.
“Again, we also know that some of the oil infrastructures are old and decayed and cannot perform at maximum capacity.
“And there is also the issue of lack of investments in fossil fuel in the country and the drive towards renewable energy has really hampered new investments in this sector,” he said.
The minister said the government had put measures in place to restore sanity in the sector.
He added that contrary to the report, the problem associated with crude oil losses are systemic issues that the government was already handling with a view to finding permanent solutions.
Sylva, therefore, urged the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and the Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) to harmoniously work together.
This, he said, would ensure that the constraints and impeding challenges in the optimal crude oil production volume were speedily addressed to boost national revenue.
According to him, the Federal Government cannot continue to lose revenue through perceived lapses in crude oil production, especially at this very critical period of scarce revenue for the nation.
The minister said that this was not the time to dwell on the mistakes of the past or engaged in needless blame games but a time to work to close all existing leakages to enable government to get maximum benefits from its crude oil and gas assets.
While expressing satisfaction at the improved security along the major oil pipelines in the region, Sylva called for sustained efforts by all concerned to maintain maximum crude oil production.
“We are very confident that Nigeria will achieve two million barrels per day crude oil production target very soon.
“The government is doing everything possible to get to where we should be and everyone is working hard to achieve this,” the minister said.
