OpeOluwani Akintayo
Abuja — State oil company, NNPC said spates of pipeline vandalism reduced by 34.29 percent in April.
A statement issued in Abuja by the corporation’s Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Kennie Obateru said April’s pipeline reduction was from 70 recorded in March 2021 to 46 in April.
A breakdown showed that Port Harcourt area accounted for 54 percent, while Mosimi accounted for 46 percent of the vandalised points.
In the gas sector, a total of 209.27 billion cubic feet of natural gas was produced in the month under review, translating to an average daily production of 6,975.72 million standard cubic feet per day.
For the period of April 2020 to April 2021, a total of 2,902.52bcf of gas was produced, representing an average daily production of 7,369.76mmscfd during the period.
Period-to-date production from Joint Ventures, Production Sharing Contracts and NPDC contributed about 62.07 per cent, 19.95 per cent and 17.98 per cent respectively to the total national gas production.
In terms of natural gas off-take, commercialisation and utilisation, out of the 206.40bcf supplied in April 2021, a total of 126.83bcf of gas was commercialised consisting of 42.92bcf and 83.91bcf for the domestic and export markets respectively.
This translates to a total supply of 1,430.90mmscfd of gas to the domestic market and 2,976.94mmscfd of gas supplied to the export market for the month.
“This implies that 61.45 per cent of the average daily gas produced was commercialised, while the balance of 38.55 per cent was either re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared,” the corporation stated.
It added, “Gas flare rate was 9.74 per cent for the month under review (i.e. 670.19mmscfd) compared with average gas flare rate of 7.42 per cent (i.e. 542.22mmscfd) for the period of April 2020 to April 2021.”
The oil firm stated that a total of 795mmscfd was delivered to gas-fired power plants in the month of April 2021 to generate an average power of about 3,416 megawatts of power.
It also announced a trading surplus of N43.57bn in April 2021, representing a 23.64 per cent increase over the N35.24bn surplus it recorded in the preceding month of March 2021.
NNPC stated that the surplus was contained in its April 2021 report, adding that its group operating revenue in the review month, as compared to March 2021, increased by 17.73 per cent or N80.67bn to stand at N535.61bn.
Similarly, expenditure for the month increased by 17.24 per cent or N72.34bn to stand at N492.05bn.
The report attributed the rise in trading surplus to the activities of the corporation’s upstream subsidiary – the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company – such as crude oil lifting from OML 119 (Okono Okpoho) and OMLs 60, 61, 62, 63 (Nigerian Agip Oil Company), as well as increase in gas sales.
NNPC said the outlook was further consolidated by the robust gains of two other subsidiaries namely, Duke Oil and National Engineering and Technical Company.
In the downstream, NNPC stated that a total of 1.67 billion litres of Premium Motor Spirit translating to 55.79 million litres/day were supplied in the month under review.
