The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) yesterday allayed the fears that the country may be in for another round of scarcity of petroleum products. The Corporation assured Nigerians that it has over 1.3 billion litres of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, in its reserves, which could last at least, 36 days. It also debunked the speculations in a section of the media that there had been a shortage of aviation fuel, stressing that such speculations were designed by some interest groups to create panic buying and possible price hike on these products Group Managing Director of NNPC, Dr. Maikanti Baru, made these clarifications while receiving the Managing Director, Daily Telegraph Publishing Company and President, Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), Mrs. Funke Egbemode, who paid him a courtesy visit at the NNPC Towers, Abuja.
Egbemode was accompanied on the visit by the Editor of New Telegraph, Mr. Ayodele Ojo and Mr. Taiwo Ahmed, the Business Development Manager of the newspaper.
The NNPC boss said that in a bid to ensure adequate supply of petroleum products at all times, the corporation has also intervened in some of the deregulated products like diesel.
According to him, the NNPC has sufficient stock of diesel, which will last over 20 days, adding that these were all geared towards augmenting whatever quantity of products the marketers were bringing into the country. “We have consistently brought in between 30,000 and 45,000 metric tons ships on the average, every week.
That is to augment the supply required by the country. We have also intervened in the delivery of the Aviation Turbine Kerosine (ATK) required by the airlines and we have consistently ensured that there is sufficient ATK in the country to satisfy a minimum of 20 days’ requirement. However, we continuously hear maybe at the behest of some organisations that want to create panic by saying these products are not available.
We in NNPC, as the supplier of last resort, will continuously monitor the fuel supply environment and ensure that the country is always kept wet with all the products that are required,” he said. Baru expressed appreciation to the media for its collaboration with the NNPC in the area of advocacies against pipeline vandalism, which has greatly affected the operations of the corporation.
He lamented that with the frequent vandalism visited on the pipelines, the NNPC now relies a lot on moving petroleum products by road, using tankers. This situation, he said, has put the NNPC in a very difficult situation whenever tanker owners or drivers go on strike. He said that in spite of the challenges, the NNPC has continued to make efforts geared towards improving its operations and growing the country’s reserves in oil and gas. “Last year, we were able to push the reserves to 37 billion barrels of oil and also increase the gas reserves from 187trillion cubic feet of gas to 192 trillion cubic feet of gas.
As a government agency, we also took the opportunity of the low oil price to enter into areas of developing more reserves by going back to the Chad Basin and also actively starting activities in the Gongola Basin. All these are meant to develop new reserves and improve the reserves in the country.
“You might have also noted in December that we signed out on the Joint Venture (JV) cash calls. The premise, of course, is to ensure that the burden of going to government for cash call payment is removed from government and this will not reduce any revenues coming to the government because the basic revenues that come to government are from the royalties and Petroleum profit Tax (PPT) which constitutes in the region of 75 to 85 per cent of government activities in the industry. So, these revenues will still go to government.
“The cash call aspect of 15 to 25 per cent is really what we use in developing or paying for the cost of production, which remains with the producing companies.
When we successfully get out of the Joint Venture cash call, our drive is to convert these joint ventures into cooperative joint ventures, whereby they will be companies that will run basically on a similar model that we have with the NLNG, whereby we will not only be free of cash calls, it will also, in addition to royalties and PPT, have profits at every quarter or yearly basis depending on how the various entities and shareholders agreement cone to play. “We have lots of challenges in security and this, through various efforts is subsiding.
We are setting up a security council that will include some of the operators in the various joint ventures and PSC operators, the various host communities to ensure that we have a robust programme to stem any possible social unrest.
“Of course, this will be done in tandem with whatever efforts government makes to ensure that security in our various areas of operations are sustained and our pipelines and facilities can operate optimally,” Baru said. Earlier, Egbemode had applauded the contributions of the NNPC to the development of the Nigerian economy.
She said that through the might of the giant national oil corporation, every sector of the economy, including the media industry, had survived through the years. Egbemode said that there was need for collaboration between the NNPC and New Telegraph as both organizations stood to derive mutual benefits from such relationship.
“We are here to say well done for what you have been doing for Nigeria. We have done our little bit to support you and we are here to say we can do more. We want to partner with you and project you positively and while doing that “benefitting from the wealth of the NNPC,” she said.
Credits: New Telegraph
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