- Pipeline vandalism drops by 40%
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on Sunday said it posted a total of $490.03 million in export of crude oil and gas in February 2019, indicating a 32.45 per cent rise over the previous month’s sale.
The NNPC Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Mr. Ndu Ughamadu, in the February 2019 edition of the corporation’s monthly financial and operations report (MFOR) in Abuja, stated that crude oil export sales contributed $350.29 million (71.48 per cent) of the dollar transactions compared with $240.23 million contribution in the previous month.
The report, being the 43rd edition of the NNPC MFOR, explained that the export gas sales amounted to $139.74 million in the month under review, stating that the February 2018 to February 2019 crude oil and gas transactions indicated that crude oil & gas worth of $5.94 billion was exported.
The report also announced a 40 per cent drop in recorded cases of oil pipeline vandalism in February 2019 when compared with the reported incidents of January 2019.
A breakdown of the report indicated that in February 2019, a total of 137 pipeline points were vandalised, which translate to 40 per cent drop from the 230 points vandalised in January 2019.
Mosimi-Ibadan petroleum products pipeline accounted for 72 per cent of the breaks, while Kaduna, Port Harcourt, Warri and Gombe lines made up the remaining 28 per cent.
The report attributed the drop in the pipelines break to efforts by NNPC, the local communities and other stakeholders to reduce and eventually eliminate pipeline vandalism.
To ensure continuous increase in petrol supply and effective distribution across the country, 1.27 billion litres of petrol translating to 45.53 million litres per day were supplied for the month.
The MFOR explained that in the downstream sector, the corporation has continued to diligently monitor the daily stock of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), otherwise called petrol, to achieve a smooth distribution of petroleum products and zero fuel queue across the nation.
In terms of natural gas off-take, commercialisation and utilisation, the records indicated that within the period, daily average natural gas supply to gas power plants increased by 8.23 per cent to 819.85 million standard cubic feet (mmscf), equivalent to power generation of 3,336MW.
The figure is an improvement from the January 2019 record when an average of 757mmscfd was supplied to generate 3,124MW.
Also, out of the 223.23 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas supplied in February 2019, a total of 127.62bcf of gas was commercialised, consisting of 37.77bcf and 89.85bcf for the domestic and export market respectively.
This translates to a total supply of 1,349.03mmscfd of gas to the domestic market and 3,780.24mmscfd of gas supplied to the export market for the month.
This implies that 57.17 per cent of the average daily gas produced was commercialised, while the balance of 42.83 per cent was re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared.
Gas flare rate was 9.51 per cent for the month under review i.e. 757.94mmscfd, compared to average gas flare rate of 9.52 per cent i.e. 750.01mmscfd for the period February 2018 to February 2019.
Source: THISDAY
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