*Petrol dripping from pump.
Ike Amos
29 July 2017, Sweetcrude, Lagos — The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has borne a loss of N67.719 billion, listed as under recovery, over a five-month period, from January to May 2017.
This was contained in the Monthly Financial Statement of the NNPC for the month of May 2017, released recently.
The listing of under recovery’ in the financial statement of the NNPC, showed that the NNPC had been paying or bearing the cost of subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) since the beginning of the year
Under-recovery, in downstream petroleum marketing, is when the expected open market price of PMS, is below the approved official retail price at the pump.
Giving a breakdown of the under recovery on a month-on-month basis, the report stated that in January, under recovery stood at N37.26 billion; February, N6.3 billion; March N8.207 billion; April N8.207 billion and May N7.744 billion.
Apart from under recovery, the NNPC recorded crude oil losses of N11.215 billion; petroleum product losses of N3.255 billion, while N54.917 billion was spent on pipeline repair and management between January and May 2017.
In the area of crude oil losses, the NNPC noted that between January and March, crude oil valued at N1.118 billion, N1.57 billion and N2.02 billion were lost respectively, to vandalisation and theft, while N2.39 billion and N4.12 billion were lost in April and May 2017 respectively.
In the aspect of petroleum products, the NNPC recorded no loss in January and February 2017, while for March, April, May, N0.681 billion, N1.246 billion and N1.328 billion were lost to vandals respectively.
Also, the spent N11.224 billion, N15.8 billion and N11.53 billion for the repair and management of the country’s pipeline network, while it spent N8.57 billion and N7.787 billion in April and May 2017 respectively.
Furthermore, over the five-month period, the NNPC recorded domestic crude oil payments of N645.112 billion, gas and other receipts stood at N12.41 billion, while the NNPC remitted a total of N416.089 billion to the Federation Account Allocation Committee in the period under review.
Stating its other achievements of the period, the NNPC said it is currently strategizing to build a 500 million standard cubic feet of gas per day metering plant to serve the planned capacity expansion of Egbin Power Plant from its installed capacity of 1,320 megawatts (MW) to 2,670MW.
This according to the NNPC, was because the it is the biggest gas supplier to Egbin power plant, which in turn, is equally the biggest power plant in Nigeria.
Again, the NNPC said it had set 2019 target to exit importation of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), noting that currently, all the nation’s three refineries were producing petroleum products loading at least five to six million litres of PMS daily and about that same quantity of Automotive Gasoline Oil (AGO) daily from the three refineries.
“In the same vein, NNPC is campaigning for co-locating for new refineries within the existing ones together with the new ones that will be built,” the NNPC explained.
