Nigeria exported crude oil and gas worth $3.71bn from August 2019 to August 2020, latest statistics released by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation have shown.

The NNPC also stated that Nigeria’s total crude oil and gas export sale increased in the month of August 2020 by 64.84 per cent to $139.5m when compared to what was recorded in the preceding month.

Figures from the just released August 2020 Monthly Financial and Operations Report of the NNPC showed that crude oil export sales contributed $80.27m or 57.54 per cent of the dollar transactions.

This was in contrast to the $55.29m contribution in the previous month, while the gas export sales amounted to $59.23m in the month under review.

“The August 2019 to August 2020 crude oil and gas transactions indicated that crude oil and gas worth $3.71bn were exported,” the oil firm stated.

It also indicated an increased trading surplus of ₦29.6bn posted by the oil firm compared to the ₦20.36bn surplus in July 2020, which was the third consecutive month of global recovery from the COVID-19 effect.

The oil firm stated that the 45 per cent improvement in performance was as a result of the 82 per cent growth in surplus posted by the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company due to sustained improvement in global market fundamentals.

The NNPC group surplus was further enhanced by the 109 per cent increased profit by Duke Oil Incorporated, as well as 75 per cent and 22 per cent reduction in deficits for the Nigerian Pipelines and Storage Company and refineries.

The report stated that these arose from the declining costs of pipeline maintenance and corporate overheads respectively, thus mitigating the effect of the increased deficits posted by some other business units of the group.

“The deficits are because of reasons around low sales volume, reduced debt collection and high average product landing cost,” NNPC stated.

In the downstream sector, the oil firm stated that to ensure continuous increased Premium Motor Spirit supply and effective distribution across the country, a total of 0.95 billion litres of PMS translating to 30.53 million litres per day was supplied in August 2020.

During the month, a total of 37 pipeline points were vandalised, representing about three per cent increase from the 36 points recorded in July 2020.

Atlas Cove-Mosimi and Mosimi-Ibadan accounted for 38 per cent and 24 per cent respectively, while PHC-Aba and the other locations in turn, recorded 22 per cent and the remaining 16 per cent of the total breaks.

The NNPC further said that it supplied 727 million standard cubic feet per day of natural gas for power generation in the month of August 2020.

This, it said, was an equivalent of 2,538 megawatts of power generation and represented an increase of 2.80 per cent from the previous month’s figure.

It stated that the country’s natural gas production in August 2020 increased by 0.13 per cent at 236.66 billion cubic feet compared to output in July 2020, translating to an average daily production of 7,639.99mmscfd.

For the period of August 2019 to August 2020, a total of 3,062.95BCF of gas was produced, representing an average daily production of 7,771.13mmscfd during the period.

Period-to-date production from Joint Ventures, Production Sharing Contracts and the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company contributed about 69.96 per cent, 20.26 per cent and 9.78 per cent respectively.

Source: Punch