ICYMI: Pipeline vandalism decreased by 37% in January, says NNPC

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says vandalism of pipelines across the country reduced by 37.21 percent in January.

In a statement on Tuesday, Kennie Obateru, the group general manager of NNPC public affairs division, said the figure is contained in the January 2021 edition of the NNPC monthly financial and operations report (MFOR).

He noted that 27 pipeline points were vandalized in January compared to 43 points recorded in December 2020.

The Mosimi area accounted for 74 percent of the vandalised points while Kaduna and Port Harcourt accounted for the remaining 22 percent and 4 percent, respectively.

Obateru assured that the corporation is working in collaboration with the local communities and other stakeholders to reduce and eventually eliminate the pipeline vandalism menace.

The NNPC said it supplied a total of 1.44 billion litres of premium motor spirit, better known as petrol, which translates to 46.30 million litres per day, across the country in January.

In the gas sector, the report stated that a total of 223.55 billion cubic feet (BCF) of natural gas was produced in the month of January, translating to an average daily production of 7,220.226 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd).

It said the 223.55BCF gas production figure represents a 4.79 percent increase over output in December 2020.

“Also, the daily average natural gas supply to gas power plants increased by 2.38 percent to 836mmscfd, equivalent to power generation of 3,415MW,” the statement read.

“For the period of January 2020 to January 2021, a total of 2,973.01BCF of gas was produced representing an average daily production of 7,585.78 mmscfd during the period.

“Period-to-date production from Joint Ventures (JVs), Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) and Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) contributed about 65.20 percent, 19.97 percent and 14.83 percent respectively to the total national gas production.

“Out of the total gas output in January 2021, a total of 149.24BCF of gas was commercialized consisting of 44.29BCF and 104.95BCF for the domestic and export markets respectively.

“This translates to a total supply of 1,428.65mmscfd of gas to the domestic market and 3,385.57mmscfd to the export market in the month under review.

“This indicates that 67.15 percent of the daily gas output was commercialized while the balance of 32.85 percent was re-injected, used as upstream fuel, or flared.

“Gas flare rate was 7.73 percent for the month under review (i.e. 554.01mmscfd) compared with average gas flare rate of 7.19 percent (i.e. 539.69mmscfd) for the period of January 2020 to January 2021”.