NNPC: Daily Petrol Consumption Averages 53.2m Litres in Nine Months

Chineme Okafor in Abuja

Nigerians consumed a total of 479 million litres of petrol from January 2018 to September 2018, representing an average of 53.2 million litres daily for nine months, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), has disclosed.

NNPC’s operational and financial results for September 2018 also showed that the country consumed 80 million litres of petrol per day in March 2018, up from the 41 million litres consumed daily in December 2017.

The corporation also indicated that its refineries in Warri, Port Harcourt, and Kaduna, which have a combined refining capacity of 445,000 barrels per day, made profit only in one month in a period of one year – September 2017 to September 2018.

In the operations and financial report for the month of September 2018, which was obtained by THISDAY yesterday in Abuja, the corporation stated that while daily petrol consumption by Nigeria’s domestic market jumped from 41 million litres in December 2017 to 80 million litres in March 2018, the refineries were only able to make a profit of N6.3 billion in April of 2018, and recorded losses in the other 11 months.

According to the NNPC, in September 2017, daily national petroleum consumption was 31 million litres.
The daily consumption, however, moved up to 52 million litres in October; 26 million litres in November; 41 million in December and 49 million in January 2018.

According to the report, the rise in consumption levels continued in February with 67 million litres, and then hit the all time high of 80 million in March.

The report added that it dropped to 53 million in April; 38 million in May and 44 million in June.
In July, it further dropped to 39 million litres and rose again to 54 and 55 million litres in August and September of 2018, respectively.

NNPC did not explain the reasons for fluctuations in the national petrol consumption levels in the monthly report.
The corporation had explained in the recent past that most of the petrol it imported into Nigeria was smuggled out to the neighboring West African countries where the price of product was higher than Nigeria’s N145 official price
It had also stated that it was working with the Nigerian Customs to stop such smuggling operations.

Refineries Recorded Profit Once in One Year

With regards to the operations of its refineries, NNPC, explained that in September 2017, they recorded a deficit of N3.5 billion; N7.7 billion in October; N11.14 billion in November and N11.095 billion in December.
The report showed that the losses continued in January 2018 with N13.5 billion; N8.05 billion in February; N11.8 billion in March, and then a profit of N6.3 billion in April of 2018.

The profit was not sustained as N20 billion, N14.5 billion, N10.4 billion, N10.7 billion and N6.9 billion were recorded as losses in May, June, July, August and September respectively.

“The Corporation has been adopting a merchant plant refineries business model since January 2017. The model takes cognisance of the products worth and crude costs.

“The combined value of output by the three refineries (at import parity price) for the month of September 2018 amounted to N1.44 billion while the associated crude plus freight costs and operational expenses were nil and N8.41 billion respectively. This resulted to an operating deficit of N6.97 billion by the refineries.”

On transfer of funds to the joint venture cash call account for oil production between September 2017 and September 2018, the report stated: “Total export crude oil and gas receipt for the period September 2017 to September 2018 stood at $5.31 billion. Out of which the sum of $3.94 billion was transferred to JV Cash Call as first line charge and the balance of $1.37 billion was paid into Federation Account.”

It added that within the period under review, the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) received total of N1,530, 512,921.061 from proceeds of oil sales.