Nigerians consume 1.44 billion litres of petrol in January

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has disclosed that it supplied 1.44 billion litres of Premium Motor Spirit, petrol, in the month of January 2021, amounting to an average daily supply of 46.30million.

The January petrol consumption data is a marked difference from the currently projected figure of about 70 million litres daily consumption of petrol.

NNPC in a statement by the Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Dr Kennie Obateru, in Abuja on Tuesday said the data is contained in the January 2021 edition of the NNPC Monthly Financial and Operations Report, MFOR.

He explained that in the gas sector, a total of 223.55 billion cubic feet of natural gas was produced in the month of January 2021, translating to an average daily production of 7,220.22 mmscfd.

“The 223.55BCF gas production figure also represents a 4.79 per cent increase over output in December 2020”, he added.

According to him, the daily average natural gas supply to gas power plants increased by 2.38 per cent to 836mmscfd, equivalent to power generation of 3,415MW.

He stated that for the period of January 2020 to January 2021, a total of 2,973.01BCF of gas was produced representing an average daily production of 7,585.78 mmscfd during the period.

“Period-to-date production from Joint Ventures, JVs, Production Sharing Contracts, PSCs, and Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, NPDC, contributed about 65.20 per cent, 19.97 per cent and 14.83 per cent respectively to the total national gas production.

“Out of the total gas output in January 2021, a total of 149.24BCF of gas was commercialized consisting of 44.29BCF and 104.95BCF for the domestic and export markets respectively”.

“This”, Dr Obateru further stated, “translates to a total supply of 1,428.65mmscfd of gas to the domestic market and 3,385.57mmscfd to the export market in the month under review.

“This indicates that 67.15 per cent of the daily gas output was commercialized while the balance of 32.85 per cent was re-injected, used as upstream fuel, or flared”.

NNPC said the gas flare rate was 7.73 per cent for the month under review (i.e. 554.01mmscfd) compared with the average gas flare rate of 7.19 per cent (i.e. 539.69mmscfd) for the period of January 2020 to January 2021.

The Corporation also revealed that cases of pipeline vandalism across the country in the month of January 2021 decreased by 37.21 per cent.

It said that a total of 27 pipeline points were vandalized in January 2021 down from the 43 points recorded in December 2020.

It said that the Mosimi Area accounted for 74 per cent of the vandalized points while Kaduna Area and Port Harcourt accounted for the remaining 22 per cent and 4 per cent respectively