The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on Wednesday reported that its earnings for the months March, 2020 fell by 300 percent.
This led to a trading deficit of N9.53 billion for the month compared to the N3.95 billion surplus posted in February 2020.
The Corporation in a statement by its Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Dr. Kennie Onateru explained that the decline in earnings was due primarily to the huge decrease of 181 per cent in its upstream subsidiary, Nigerian Petroleum Development Company’s (NPDC) due to the decline in crude oil prices precipitated by the Coronavirus-induced global slowdown which it stated led to reduced exports and dwindling world oil consumption; combined with deficits posted by the refineries, among others.
Obateru said this was contained in NNPC Monthly Financial and Operations Report for March, 2020.
The report stated that total crude oil and gas export sale of $256.19 million in March 2020 which decreased by 30.89 per cent, compared to last month’s.
Of the total sales, crude oil export sales contributed $184.59 million (72.05%) of the dollar transactions compared with $281.14 million contribution in the previous month; while the export gas sales amounted to $71.60million in the month.
The March 2019 to March 2020 crude oil and gas transactions indicated that crude oil & gas worth $4.95 billion was exported.
NNPC stated that in the downstream, to ensure continuous availability of Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) and effective distribution of the product across the country, 1.73billion litres of PMS, translating to 59.72mn liters/day were supplied for the month.
The report disclosed that 218.37 billion Cubic Feet (BCF) of natural gas was produced in March 2020, translating to an average daily production of 7493.65 Million Standard Cubic Feet per Day (mmscfd).
The release said 3,119.89BCF of gas was produced for the period March 2019 to March 2020, representing an average daily production of 7,912.05mmscfd during the period.
It explained that period-to-date production from Joint Ventures (JVs), Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) and NPDC contributed about 69.37 per cent, 21.67 per cent and 8.95 per cent, respectively, to the total national gas production.
Out of the 218.37BCF of gas supplied in March 2020, according to the report, 120.73BCF of gas was commercialized, consisting of 33.45BCF and 87.28BCF for the domestic and export market respectively, translating to 1,235.56mmscfd of gas to the domestic market and 3,817.40mmscfd of gas supplied to the export market for the month.
The report said 55.63 percent of the average daily gas produced was commercialized, while the balance of 44.37 percent was re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared.
Gas flare rate was 9.08 per cent for the month under review i.e. 679.54mmscfd, compared with average gas flare rate of 8.43 per cent i.e. 666.90mmscfd for March 2019 to March 2020.
