The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) yesterday said it was spending a total of $1.8 billion quarterly to import Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) known as fuel into the country.
Group Executive Director (Upstream) of the corporation, Bello Rabiu, disclosed this while briefing State House Correspondents in Abuja while commenting on the lingering fuel scarcity nationwide.
Bello, who was joined at the briefing by Henry Obih, Group Executive Director (Downstream), Anibor Kragha, Group Executive Director (Re-ineries) and the Group General Manager, Public Affairs, Garba Deen Mohammed, apologised to Nigerians for the pains they are experiencing in accessing the product.
According to Bello, “spending on imports rely on two things: volume and the price.” He said: “As we speak today, a cargo of product of about 40 million litres will cost about $13 to 14 million.
And we need about 45 to 50 million litres to satisfy the country, depending on the time and the condition in the country. “So, if you assume that about $16 million per day, it can also go up to $20 million depending on the price.
It means you need $20 million multiplied by 90 days for a quarter.” “That is $1.8 billion. So, this amount is required to import the country’s fuel requirement for one quarter. “Every month, we need $600 million to import fuel. So, we need $1.8 billion to import the country’s requirement for one quarter,” he added.
He told reporters that the corporation was taking urgent steps,, including releasing more products to the petroleum stations, to end the current queues. “The objective is to brief you on the current situation of the petroleum products scarcity and queues all over the country.
“Let us start by tendering our apology and tell the people that we are really doing the right thing. We have been working very hard. It is supply issues that have been causing this problem, but we are doing everything possible to end it.
“What we are doing now is to ensure that we get necessary supplies into the country through imports, as well as through our refineries. “As we speak today, we have five vessels serving products all over the country.
And not only in Lagos, but also Port Harcourt, Warri and Calabar,” he added. Bello noted further that “apart from these vessels discharging, we also have private sector people that imported and are discharging currently.
“At least 120 million litres. In moving the product out into the hinterland, we have a little option because most of the pipelines are still not working. Because pipelines are not working, we are relying on about 100 per cent trucking to the hinterlands.
“The plan is that going forward, from today, we want to ensure that we give what is more than required in this country. “The total requirement for the whole country is about 1,300 trucks. But our plan is to make at least 1,500 trucks available everyday.
We want to make sure that we sustain the market in a very short time. You can see that Lagos is almost cleared. Abuja is getting better. Other places will follow. “Yesterday, we were pushing 960 trucks into the cities, but what was loading out of the depots was much more than that.
We are now in a position to say that each state demands have been captured,” he said. Bello noted that in a very short while, the whole country would be wet. “We now have enough supply. Port Harcourt refinery is already delivering five million litres per day, that is more than 120 trucks.
That is not even enough for Port Harcourt area and Bayelsa,” he said. Meanwhile, NNPC yesterday declared plans to restart the 110,000 barrel per day Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Limited on Friday as it heightened efforts to end acute shortage of the product.
The corporation, which is excited over the production of five million litres of petrol by the 210,000 barrels a day capacity Port Harcourt Refining and Petrochemical Limited, had declared that the Kaduna Refinery would be brought back on stream by mid-April.
Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, NNPC, Muhammad, maintained that work began on the refinery since last week. “It is not in full capacity. Production is between three and five million litres daily,” Reuters quoted Muhammad to have said. Despite being Africa’s largest crude exporter, Nigeria imports almost all of its fuel.
Dollar shortage and the shutdown of refineries have, for weeks, left motorists queuing for petrol across the country. NNPC said this month it planned to restart its 110,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Kaduna by mid- April.
Nigeria has a refining capacity of 445,000 barrels per day from four refineries, but they have been mostly shut due to years of neglect and corruption. Last month, Minister of State for Petroleum, Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, said Nigeria was in talks with oil companies, Chevron, Total and ENI, seeking help to revamp the ailing refineries.
Before it was shut down in the first quarter of 2016, the Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Limited restarted operations on January 20 after months of closure for repairs. The re-streaming of the 110,000 barrels per day (bpd) capacity plant and resumption of fuel production were major boosts to the effort by the Federal Government to augment the supply of petroleum products towards resolving the fuel scarcity problem in major cities in the country.
The refinery, as at January 20, began production with an initial yield of about 1.5 million litres of petrol, which then increased its daily production capacity to 3.2 million litres. “The injection of this volume into the system will significantly impact ongoing special intervention efforts by the NNPC management designed to bring relief to motorists across the country,” a source at the NNPC said.
Prior to its closure in September, Kaduna Refinery had not worked for most part of last year, except briefly in July and August 2015, when its utilisation capacity dropped to about 2.6 per cent and 10.5 per cent respectively, according to the NNPC monthly operational report for October 2015.
The 125,000 bpd capacity Warri Refinery, which was closed down since September, equally for repairs, would be the last to come back on stream, according to the resumption timeline expected to see all the refineries come back on or before the end of the second quarter.
