The other day the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) announced that 218.37 billion cubic feet of natural gas (about 6 billion cubic meters) were produced in March 2020, which is equivalent to an average daily production of 7493.65 million standard cubic feet per day.
This is stated in the NNPC’s monthly report on financial and operational indicators for March 2020.
The report says that 3,119.89 billion cubic feet of gas were produced between March 2019 and March 2020, which is equivalent to an average daily production of 7,912.05 million cubic feet per day.
It explained that since the beginning of the year, production by joint ventures (JVs), production sharing contracts (PSAs) and NPDC in the total natural gas production volume made about 69.37%, 21.67% and 8.95% respectively.
According to the report, 55.63 percent of the average daily volume of gas produced was commercialized, and the remained 44.37% was used as extracted fuel gas or for flaring.
During the month under review, the report also told about a trade deficit of $ 9.53 billion fixed in March 2020, compared with a positive balance of 3.95 billion pounds, published in February 2020.
The report said that more than a 300% decrease of revenues in March 2020 was caused mainly by a huge (by 181%) drop of revenues of the subsidiary Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) due to the decline of crude oil prices caused by the pandemic.
UNPROFOR said that total export sales of oil and gas in March 2020 amounted to $256.19 million, which is 30.89 per cent lower than in the previous month. Of the total volume of sales, export sale of crude oil totaled $184.59 million (72.05%) compared to $281.14 million of the previous month, while export sale of gas made $71.60 million within a month.
During the reporting period, 19 pipeline points were destroyed, which is about 47 percent less than the 32 points registered in February 2020. The reduction of tie-ins on the Atlas Cove-Mosimi pipeline sections was 53 per cent, while Mosimi-Ibadan was 21 per cent and Suleja-Minna accounted for the rest 26 per cent.
The reported assured that NNPC through cooperation with local communities and other concerned parties constantly strived to reduce the threat down to the bottom level.
The MFI’s March 2020 report on NNPC is the 56th edition in a series that began in 2016.
The Corporation is also committed to transparency and accountability. For example, it published an audited financial report for 2018 on March 19, 2020 and received praise for transparency from observers locally and internationally.
