The Federal Government has increased the amount of crude oil being supplied to the nation’s refineries from 445,000 barrels per day to 650,000bpd.
This, however, was despite the fact that the refineries had yet to start operating at their various optimum capacities. The facilities commenced the production of petroleum products recently but not at full capacity.
The refineries are Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company, Port Harcourt Refining Company and Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company. They are managed and run by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
The NNPC, in its latest financial and operations report for March 2016, stated that the country’s refineries now get additional 205,000bpd of crude.
Before now, the facilities get a combined volume of 445,000bpd of crude. But in the corporation’s latest report, the government gave them 650,000bpd.
The NNPC also stated that its group operational loss in the month of March was N18.89bn, down from the N24.23bn recorded in the preceding month of February, 2016.
The national oil firm explained that it had finally switched to the Direct Sale-Direct Purchase arrangement for petroleum products, adding that the DSDP was designed to guarantee flexibility in supply.
It said, “About 55.2 per cent of the total domestic crude oil supply in the month of February 2016 was via DSDP. Refineries rehabilitation is also at full speed to address the perennial shortage of fuel in the country. This is in addition to co-locating of smaller refineries to leverage on the existing facilities and boost the nation’s refining capacity from 445,000 barrels per day to 650,000.”
The corporation stated that total crude oil processed by the three refineries in the month of March 2016 was 329,396 metric tons, which translate to a combined yield efficiency of 94.98 per cent.
This, it said, was in contrast to crude processed in February 2016 of 32,352MT.
It stated that the improved performance of the refineries was due to the success achieved in the repairs of crude pipeline that was vandalised.
On its loss reduction, it stated that the improvement was largely driven by improved petroleum products sales and better cost control measures.
It said, “Production shut-in occasioned by vandalism of Forcados Export Line has continued to drag NNPC’s performance. This situation denied NPDC the opportunity to earn revenue from crude oil sales of about N20bn which would have finally placed NNPC on good profitable footing. The sabotage also affected the Federation Equity Revenue.”
The report further noted that Nigerian crude oil production for the month of February 2016 stood at 59.27 million barrels, which was lower than January, 2016 crude production of 66.49 million barrels.
