Mallam Mele Kyari, the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has explained that the Corporation is looking forward to having a partnership with Dangote Refinery in order to turn Nigeria into a fully fledged fuel-exporting country.

The NNPC boss made the disclosure in a recent interview with newsmen. Mr. Kyari said that the NNPC is keen on becoming a “supplier of first resort” for the Dangote Refinery and that the deal would turn the country into a fuel supply hub for the sub-region.

In the meantime, Mr. Kyari hinted that the Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline (NMGP) Project would open new windows of opportunities for the gas aspirations of Nigeria. “Ultimately, it will be a contract to supply crude,” he told newsmen in the interview.

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The NNPC had in May 2019, reported a total export sale of crude oil and gas of $490.03 million for February 2019. This information was contained in the Corporation’s official Monthly Financial and Operations Report (MFOR).

According to the NNPC report, the Corporation’s revenue from oil and gas export sales increased by 32.45%, higher than the sales made in the previous month. Basically, crude oil export sales contributed $350.29 million (71.48%) of the dollar transactions in February compared with $240.23 million contributed in the previous month.

The export gas sales amounted to $139.74 million in the month under review. In terms of natural gas off-take, NNPC revealed that daily average natural gas supply to power plants increased by 8.23% to 819.85 million standard cubic feet (MMscf), equivalent to power generation of 3,336MW. This implies an improvement from the January 2019 record where an average of 757 MMscfd was supplied to generate 3,124MW.

Out of the 223.23 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas supplied in February 2019, a total of 127.62bcf was commercialized consisting of 37.77bcf and 89.85bcf for the domestic and export market respectively.

Also, 57.17% of the average daily gas produced was commercialized while the balance of 42.83% was re-injected and used as upstream fuel gas or flared. Gas flare rate was 9.51% for the month under review.

Samson Oyedeyi