Peter Uzoho
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said the daily average natural gas supply to gas-powered plants increased by 16.53 per cent to 645 million (mscfd), equivalent to generate 2,178MW of electricity in November 2019.
Comparatively, the October 2019 gas supply to power averaged 553mmscfd, which could generate 2,050 MW of electricity.
Acting Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division of NNPC, Mr. Samson Makoji, in a statement yesterday, said the figure was extracted from the 53rd edition of the NNPC Monthly Financial and Operations Report (MFOR).
The financial report also showed that national gas production in November 2019 stood at 228.65billion Cubic Feet (BCF), translating to an average daily production of 7,621.68 million (mmscfd).
According to the report, during the period covering November 2018 to November 2019, a total of 3,091.24bcf of gas was produced, representing an average daily production of 7,882.27mmscfd.
It added that a period-to-date Production from Joint Ventures (JVs), Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) and Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) contributed about 69.50 per cent, 21.06 per cent and 9.44 per cent respectively to the total national gas production.
The report also showed that out of the total volume of gas supplied in November 2019, 137.02BCF of gas was commercialised, consisting of 35.29bcf and 101.73BCF for the domestic and export markets respectively.
This translates to a total supply of 1,176.40mmscfd of gas to the domestic market and 3,391.04mmscfd of gas supplied to the export market for the month, implying that 59.91 per cent of the average daily gas produced was commercialised, while the balance of 40.09 per cent was re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared.
Gas flare rate was 8.29 per cent for the month under review, i.e. 632.37mmscfd, compared with an average gas flare rate of 8.80 per cent, i.e. 692.97mmscfd for the period between November 2018 and November 2019.
The report said an export sale of crude oil and gas of $504.44 million was recorded in November 2019; indicating an increase of 4.39 per cent compared to the previous month.
According to the November report, crude oil export sales contributed $383.89 million (76.10 per cent) of the dollar transactions compared with $396.94 million contribution in the previous month while the export gas sales amounted to $120.55 million in the month.
It said the November 2018 to November 2019 crude oil and gas transactions indicated that crude oil and gas worth $5.46 billion was exported.
The NNPC report said the corporation suffered 94 per cent increase in the cases of wilful hacking and destruction of its pipeline infrastructure across the country in November last year and blamed the incident on oil thieves.
The report, however, showed that 68 pipeline points were vandalised, representing about 94 per cent increase from the 35 points that were breached in October 2019.
The report stated that out of the vandalised points, 15 failed to be welded while only two pipeline points were ruptured.
A breakdown of the breach indicated that the Mosimi-Ibadan axis accounted for 31 per cent of the breaks, Atlas Cove-Mosimi network witnessed 19 per cent of the breaks while Ibadan-Ilorin and other routes accounted for 15 per cent and 35 per cent respectively.
The report also noted that NNPC, in collaboration with local communities and other stakeholders, would continuously strive to reduce and eventually eliminate pipeline vandalism through effective collaboration.
