Nigeria’s Petrol imports soars by 534 million litres – NNPC

Importation of Premium Motor Spirit, popularly known as petrol, into Nigeria, through the Direct Sale Direct Purchase scheme of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, has increased by 534 million litres, TOPNAIJA.NG reports.

The NNPC engages qualified companies in a Direct Sale of crude oil and Direct Purchase of petroleum products to ensure sustainable product supply across the country.

In the DSDP scheme, the national oil firm delivers monthly crude oil lifting on Free on Board basis to a supplier who in return delivers petroleum products of Nigerian standard specification to the NNPC on Delivered at Place basis, at designated safe port(s) in Nigeria.

The petroleum products delivered by the supplier must be equivalent in value to the crude oil received from the NNPC.

Latest industry data so far released by the NNPC showed that the country’s PMS importation through the DSDP scheme increased by over 500 million litres between January 2018 and January 2019.

The NNPC has been the sole importer of PMS into Nigeria for close to two years now.

An analysis of figures on the monthly imports of petroleum products by the NNPC via the DSDP showed that in January last year, the country imported 1.464 billion litres of petrol, and this increased to 1.998 billion litres in January 2019.

NNPC said, “In January 2019, 1,998.61 million litres of PMS were imported into the country through the DSDP arrangement, as against 1,780.2 million litres of PMS supplied in the month of December 2018.”

The DSDP scheme is being used by the NNPC to keep Nigeria wet with white products (kerosene, petrol and diesel), due to the abysmal performances of Nigeria’s refineries.

The refineries include the Port Harcourt Refining Company, Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company and Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company.

No drop of crude has been processed by the PHRC since July 2018, as the last oil that was refined by the facility was done in June last year.

Also, the KRPC has not refined any crude since February last year.

The report stated that while the PHRC last refined 237,875 metric tonnes of crude in June last year, KRPC last processed 21,855MT in January 2018.

An analysis of NNPC’s latest monthly financial and operations report for January 2019 showed that the capacity utilisation of the PHRC from July 2018 to January 2019 was zero per cent, while that of the KRPC from February 2018 to January 2019 was zero per cent as well.

Of the country’s three refineries managed by the NNPC, only the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company was able to process some volumes of crude oil from January last year to January this year.

Our correspondent observed that between January 2018 and January 2019, the WRPC only recorded zero capacity utilisations in the months of January, September and October, all in 2018.

In January this year, the WRPC processed 104,459MT of crude and posted a capacity utilisation of 19.76 per cent.

The January 2019 consolidated refineries operational performance of KRPC, PHRC and WRPC put their combined capacity utilisation at 5.5 per cent.