NNPC’s gas supply to power plants rise to 89% in 16 months, as vandalism remains high
Newly released January Financial and Operational Report of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has shown that whereas the Corporation recorded surge to 88.89 per cent in gas supplies to electricity generation firms between January 2017 and date, it also suffered 194 pipeline vandalism within the period.
The report stressed that up to now, vandalism remains a serious threat to government’s efforts in sanitizing the downstream sector of the oil and gas industry, especially the move to make country a net exporter of refined petroleum products.
NNPC said of the 194 cases, the NNPC noted that PHC-Aba and Aba-Enugu pipeline segment of the network accounted for 187 points or 86.57 per cent.
The report which showed month-by-month statistics, revealed gas-to-power supply as at January 2018 stood at 731 million metric standard cubic feet (mmscf) per day as against 387mmscf/d in January 2017, representing 88.89 per cent increase.
In the report, NNPC averred that “An average of 731mmscf/d of gas was sent to over 20 domestic thermal power plants in the month of January 2018, generating a thermal power output of 3,076 megawatts (mw) to the national grid, representing 76.7 per cent of the total national power generation. It indicated that an additional 365mmscf/d of gas was supplied to the industrial sector to power over 50 companies in the period under review to boost the nation’s economy”.
Just as total gas production for the month was put at 8,169mmscf/d out of which 14 per cent was supplied to the domestic market, 43 per cent for export, the remaining 31 per cent was re-injected, meaning that 12 per cent gas was flared within the period of the month.
The 30th edition of the monthly report gave the total crude processed by the local refineries (Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company (KRPC) and Port Harcourt Refining Company (PHRC) for the month of January 2018 as 204,877MT, with KRPC accounting for 183,022MT while 21,855MT was processed by KRPC.
It stated that production by the two refineries during the period translated into a combined yield of 89.97 per cent as against the 88.99 per cent in December 2017.In the month under review, 1,463.66million litres of PMS and 33.79million litres of DPK were supplied through the Direct Supply Direct Purchase (DSDP).
Analysts say reducing monthly gas flaring level to 12 per cent leaves much to be desired.
