By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said its trading surplus dropped 4.1 per cent to N28.4 billion in September 2020.
The national oil corporation disclosed this in its latest Monthly Financial and Operation Report (MFOR) for the month of September, released in Abuja recently.
The trading surplus was N1.22 billion lesser than the amount of N29.6 billion surplus recorded in August 2020.
The marginal reduction in surplus, according to the report, was as a result of lower contribution from the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) which recorded zero crude oil lifting from the Okono Okpoho facility during the month under review.
It added that the development further occurred as a result of ongoing repairs in the facility.
Giving a breakdown, NNPC noted that, “However, other NNPC subsidiaries namely the Integrated Data Services Limited (IDSL), National Engineering and Technical Company Limited (NETCO), Nigerian Gas Marketing Company (NGMC), Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC) and NNPC Retail posted impressive trading results.
“They recorded 268, 234, 21, 422 and 41 per cent trading surpluses respectively over their previous month’s performance.”
The report further noted that the corporation also recorded a total export revenue for crude oil and gas valued at $120.49 million for the month of September.
“The $120.49 million crude oil and gas export revenue is a 16.28 per cent improvement on the $100.88 million posted in August 2020.
“Out of the figure, proceeds from crude oil amounted to 85.40 million dollars while gas and miscellaneous receipts stood at 25.31 million dollars and 9.78 million dollars respectively,” it revealed.
In the gas sector, a total of 223.82 billion cubic feet (bcf) of natural gas was produced in the month under review translating to an average daily production of 7,460.80million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd).
For the period September 2019 to September 2020, a total of 3,039.05 bcf of gas was produced representing an average daily production of 7,730.35 mmscfd during the period.
“Period-to-date production from Joint Ventures (JVs), Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) and NPDC contributed about 69.1, 20.3 and 10.6 per cent respectively to the total national gas production.
“Out of the 221.91 bcf of gas supplied in September 2020, a total of 140.45bcf was commercialised, consisting of 36.37bcf and 104.08bcf for the domestic and export markets respectively,” it said.
It further noted that the supply translated to a total supply of 1,212.17 mmscfd of gas to the domestic market and 3,469.45 mmscfd of gas supplied to the export market for the month.
This, it said implied that 63.3 per cent of the average daily gas produced was commercialised while the balance of 36.7 per cent was re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared.
It noted that gas flare rate was 6.7 per cent for the month under review (i.e. 492.93 mmscfd compared with average gas flare rate of 5.84 per cent which accounts to 439.90 mmscfd for the period of September 2019 to September 2020).
To ensure effective supply and distribution of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) across the country, a total of 0.59 billion litres of PMS translating to 19.6 million litres/day was supplied for the month in the downstream sector.
During the period under review, 21 pipeline points were vandalised representing about 43 per cent decrease from the 37 points recorded in August 2020.
Of this figure, it said that Mosimi Area accounted for 90 per cent of the vandalised points, while Port Harcourt Area accounted for the remaining 10 per cent.
It assured that the NNPC, in collaboration with the local communities and other stakeholders, continuously strive to reduce and eventually eliminate this menace.
Modupe Gbadeyanka