Three moribund refineries incur N5.92b expenses at zero production

By JOHN OFIKHENUA, Abuja

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has reported its three refineries incurred N5.92 billion expenses in September 2020 at zero production level.

According to its September 2020 Financial and Operations Report, which The Nation obtained on Thursday, the zero production record was due to on-going rehabilitation of the refineries.

The NNPC said: “In September 2020, the three refineries processed no crude and combined yield efficiency is 0.00% owing largely to on-going rehabilitation works in the Refineries.”

On Refineries Economics for the Period September 2020, the data recalled that the Corporation has been adopting a Merchant Plant Refineries Business Model since January 2017.

The model, said NNPC, takes cognizance of the Products Worth and Crude Costs.

It explained that “the combined value of output by the three refineries (at Import Parity Price) for the month of September 2020 amounted to approximately ₦0.52billion.

“No associated crude plus freight cost for the three refineries since there was no production but operational expenses amounted to ₦5.92billion.”

NNPC said this resulted to an operating deficit of ₦5.40billion by the refineries.

In the period under review, the corporation noted that Petroleum Product Supply was from Direct sales Direct Purchase (DSDP).

The report recalled in September 2020,1,578.93 million litres of PMS were supplied into the country through the DSDP arrangement as against the 1,139.27 million litres of PMS supplied in the month of August 2020.

On Downstream Petroleum Product Distributions, NNPC said a total of 603.39 million litres of white products were sold and distributed by PPMC in the month of September 2020 compared with 950.66 million litres in the month of August 2020.

According to the data, this comprised 587.57 million litres of PMS,15.57million litres of AGO and 0.255 million litres of DPK.

NNPC said: “There was no sale of special product in the month.Total sale of white products for the period September 2019 to September 2020 stood at 16,255.66million litres and PMS accounted for 16,133.22 million litres or 99.25%.” (The Nation)