Lagos, May 29, 2019 (NAN) The Independent Petroleum Marketers’ Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) has urged the Federal Government to encourage local refiners, to boost local refining of crude oil in the country.
Mr Chinedu Okoronkwo, the National President of IPMAN made the appeal in a telephone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Wednesday.
Okoronkwo said the appeal became imperative for President Buhari to encourage the local refining of petroleum products as he embarks on the second phase of his administration.
He said that only domestic refining would end ongoing challenges in the nation’s oil and gas sector.
According to him, the president should focus on how to upgrade the refineries and also encourage local refineries that are already licensed.
“This will go a long way in saving our country the needed foreign income which will be used in the development of other aspects of our economy like agriculture, mining and the manufacturing sector.
“The key focus of government should be to stimulate local refining of petroleum and petrochemical products.
“Domestic gas production for energy, industry, agricultural and automotive purposes should be given serious attention in President Muhammadu Buhari’s second term administration,’’ Okoronkwo said.
The IPMAN president urged government to reduce the rate of importation of products and also encourage local refiners to boost local production.
He said that a reduction in the volume of importation of products would not only stabilise the economy but also create millions of jobs for the unemployed youths in the country.
Okoronkwo said: ‘Job creation and manpower utilisation should also be a priority of the government at such time like this when crime rate had increased.
“Many of our present challenges are tied to unemployment and government’s inability to channel the youthful strength of our young people into productive activities,’’ he said.
Okoronkwo said that the oil and gas industry witnessed a lot of improvement in the past four years as against the era of dwindling global oil prices.
Meanwhile, a report has revealed that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) between February 2018 and February 2019, exported crude oil and gas worth 5.94 billion dollars.
The February 2019 edition of the corporation’s Monthly Financial and Operations Report (MFOR) just released, showed that the group posted a total export sale of crude oil and gas of 490.03 million dollars in February, which was 32.45 per cent higher than the previous month’s sale.
The report noted that crude oil export sales contributed 350.29 million dollars (71.48 per cent) of the dollar transactions compared with 240.23million dollars contribution in the previous month.
The report equally explained that the export gas sales amounted to 139.74 million dollars in the month under review.
While attacks on pipelines have remained high in the last few months, the development declined in February by 40 per cent when compared with the reported incidents of January 2019.
According to the report, a total of 137 pipeline points were vandalised, which translates to 40 per cent drop from the 230 points vandalized in January 2019.
In the report, Mosimi-Ibadan petroleum products pipeline accounted for 72 per cent of the breaks while Kaduna, Port Harcourt, Warri and Gombe lines made up the remaining 28 per cent.
The report attributed the drop in the line break to efforts by NNPC, the local communities and other stakeholders to reduce and eventually eliminate pipeline vandalism.
To ensure continuous increase in petrol supply and effective distribution across the country, 1.27billion litres translating to 45.53million liters/day were supplied for the month.
In terms of natural gas offtake, commercialisation and utilisation, the records indicated that within the period, daily average natural gas supply to gas power plants increased by 8.23 per cent to 819.85million standard cubic feet (mmscf), equivalent to power generation of 3,336MW. The figure is an improvement from the January 2019 record where an average of 757mmscfd was supplied to generate 3,124MW.
Also, out of the 223.23billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas supplied in February 2019, a total of 127.62bcf of gas was commercialized, consisting of 37.77bcf and 89.85bcf for the domestic and export market respectively. This translates to a total supply of 1,349.03mmscfd of gas to the domestic market and 3,780.24mmscfd of gas supplied to the export market for the month.
This implies that 57.17 per cent of the average daily gas produced was commercialised while the balance of 42.83 per cent was re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared.
