Pipeline Vandalism Dropped By 81%, Says NNPC
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation on Wednesday announced that vandalism of oil pipelines across the country reduced by 81 per cent in October 2019.
It stated that in October 2019, 35 vandalized-pipeline points, representing a decrease of 81 per cent from the 186 vandalized-points in September 2019, were recorded.
This came as the corporation again posted a trading surplus of N13.23bn in October 2019, representing an increase of 54 per cent when compared to the N8.59bn surplus posted in September last year.
In its October 2019 monthly financial and operations report, the NNPC stated that out of the 35 vandalized points recorded in the month under review, eight failed to be welded.
It stated that only one pipeline was ruptured. Ibadan-Ilorin axis accounted for 34 per cent of pipeline breaks, while ATC-Mosimi and other routes accounted for 23 per cent and 43 per cent respectively.
On the trading surplus recorded by the firm, the corporation stated that the N8.59bn recorded in September 2019 indicated an increase of 65 per cent compared to the N5.20bn posted in August 2019.
It said the N5.20bn surplus recorded in August beat the N4.26bn surplus posted in July 2019, reflecting an increase of 22 per cent.
The NNPC said the revenue increase of 54 per cent in its October 2019 accounts was largely due to improved trading surplus posted by its flagship upstream subsidiary, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company.
The report stated that the corporation recorded crude oil and gas export sales of $483.25m in October 2019, which represented an increase of 35.77 percentage point, compared to the previous month.
This implies that in the month under review, crude oil export sales contributed $396.94m (82.14 per cent) of the dollar transactions, compared with $267.97m contribution in September 2019.
“The export gas sales for the month amounted to $86.32m,” the report stated.
Overall, the October 2018 to October 2019 crude oil and gas transactions indicated that crude oil and gas worth $5.49bn was exported.
In the downstream sector, the report stated that 1.16 billion litres of Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, was supplied in October 2019, translating to 37.3 million litres per day.
In the gas sector, out of the 235.82 billion cubic feet of gas supplied in October 2019, a total of 134.97BCF of gas was commercialized, consisting of 31.37BCF and 103.6BCF for the domestic and export market respectively.
This translates to a total supply of 1,011.85 million standard cubic feet of gas to the domestic market and 3,341.84mmscfd of gas supplied to the export market for the month.
This implies that during the month, 57.23 per cent of the average daily gas produced was commercialized, while the balance of 42.77 per cent was re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared.
“Just when we thought we were ambitious to go to 30 million tonnes, Qatar wants to add 30 million tonnes to theirs. And that for us is a major reason to wake up to the reality that Train-7 is no longer ambitious. Not for NLNG, not for Nigeria, but on the back of this project, we expect to see, as the NNPC mentioned, 12,000 direct employment opportunities created by this project.”
The Group Managing Director, NNPC, Mele Kyari, stated that the project when operational, would ultimately deliver at least $20bn of net revenue to the federation, create at least 10,000 direct jobs and 40,000 indirect jobs.
In September 2019, the NLNG announced that SCD Joint Venture Consortium, comprising Saipem of Italy, Japan’s Chiyoda and Daewoo of South Korea, had emerged the preferred bidder for the Train-7 project.
It said the consort had been awarded the contract to undertake the Engineering, Procurement and Construction for the Train-7 project.
