Emmanuel Addeh
The pipelines operated by a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the Nigerian Pipelines and Storage Company (NPSC) Limited, experienced a total of 451 breaks and 11 fire incidents last year, data from the national oil company has revealed.
Contained in its just-released 2020 Annual Statistical Bulletin, a breakdown of the incidences indicated that while 349 cases were due to vandalism of the facilities, 102 were as a result of system deterioration.
Last month THISDAY reported that the NNPC lost 6.035 million barrels of crude oil to emergency shutdowns in June, as presented during its August presentation to the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC).
At an average of $73 which the product sold in June, that would be a whopping $438 million shortage posted for the month and roughly N219 billion at N500 exchange rate to the dollar.
Put side by side the NNPC’s contribution of N47.162 billion to the federation account in the month under consideration, the huge 6 million barrels, which was worth over 200 billion, dwarfed the entire funds shared in the joint pool by the federal, state and local governments.
It is also roughly the same amount to be allocated to the host communities fund in the Petroleum Industry Act (ACT), if the law was to take effect in the beginning of this year.
A breakdown of the losses, according to the document indicated that the highest combined shortage of 1.62 million barrels was from Qua Iboe, followed by losses from the Forcados facility, Anyala Madu , Usan Agbami, among others.
Pipelines network is an integral national asset designed several years back to distribute crude and white products nationwide to efficiently and seamlessly move refined products from the nations refineries to all products depots.
Movement of crude and white products were done through the pipelines over the years until the acts of vandalism rendered the pipelines inefficient as a result of the high cost of maintenance and pipeline repair due to incessant vandalism on the product lines.
“A total of 451 line breaks were reported on NPSC pipelines out of which 349 were as a result of vandalism, while 102 cases were due to system deterioration like rupture and weld failure. This resulted in a negative variance of 124,417 m3 of petroleum products.
“A total of 11 fire incidences were recorded during the year under review, 64 per cent lower than 2019,”the NNPC data stated.
The NNPC added that local refineries received a total of 79,498 barrels (10,743.00 MT) of Bonny light crude oil, but that all process units were on shutdown, thus It processed zero barrels (0.00MT) into various petroleum products.
“The total production output of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), petrol, household kerosene, diesel and fuel oil by the refineries was 0.00 Metric Tons. The combined average refining capacity utilisation for year 2020 was 0.00 per cent as against 2.53 per cent in 2019,”it noted.
In addition, the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC) evacuated 576,849MT of major petroleum products and imported 15,146.625.14 MT of petrol, diesel and kerosene for distribution through the Direct Sale Direct Purchase (DSDP) arrangement.
PPMC equally sold a total of 3,017,907,238,000 litres of major petroleum products through the depots and coastal lifting, including 221,553,033.39 MT of Naphtha, which was exported.
Estimated average daily consumption for 2020 was 60,000,000 litres of petrol; 14,133,866.51 litres of diesel; 740,316.68 litres of kerosene.
In addition, NNPC Retail Limited, another subsidiary of the national oil company, distributed 1.292 billion litres of petrol, kerosene and diesel in 2020 when compared with 1,18 billion litres of the same products in 2019.
