Even as vandalism of oil pipelines in the country upped by 50 per cent in February 2021, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has revealed that it posted about N40bn trading surplus.
Vandals reportedly tampered with Nigeria’s oil pipelines at 54 points.
While 27 points were vandalised in January 2021, in February, Warri area accounted for 50 per cent and Mosimi accounted for 39 per cent of the vandalised points, while Kaduna and Port Harcourt areas accounted for seven per cent and four per cent respectively.
The NNPC’s financial and operational record released on Thursday showed that the company recorded N39.85bn trading surplus representing a 314.24 per cent leap from the N9.62bn surplus of January 2021.
According to the report, in February 2021, the NNPC Group’s operating revenue, compared to January 2021, increased by N152.07bn (35.64 per cent) to stand at N578.79bn. The report also revealed that expenditure for the month increased by 29.21 per cent or N121.83bn to stand at N538.94bn. The expenditure, as a proportion of revenue, was 0.93 per cent, against the previous month’s 0.98 per cent.
The corporation linked the trading surplus to reconciled accounts by its downstream subsidiary, the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company, using the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency pricing template.
Other factors that boosted the trading surplus, according to the NNPC, included the performance of Duke Oil, Nigerian Gas Company and Nigerian Gas Marketing Company, which recorded robust gains due increased debt collection and cost optimisation measures.
In the period under review, the corporation supplied 1.41 billion litres of Premium Motor Spirit, translating to 50.52 million litres per day.
In terms of natural gas offtake, commercialisation and utilisation, out of the 206.05 billion cubic feet produced in February 2021, 133.06bcf was commercialised, consisting of 40.15bcf and 92.91bcf for the domestic and export market respectively.
This translates to supply of 1,433.75 million standard cubic feet per day of gas to the domestic market and 3,318.25mscfd of gas supplied to the export market for the month.
The foregoing means that 64.48 per cent of the average daily gas produced was commercialised and 35.52 per cent re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared.
Gas flare rate was 7.67 per cent for the month under review, compared to average gas flare rate of 7.12 per cent from February 2020 to February 2021.
