The country has lost over 1,500 megawatts of electricity as a result of incessant destruction oil and gas facilities by the Niger Delta militants, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has disclosed.
The loss was a result of the attacks on the forcadoes pipelines, which also resulted in the damage of gas pipelines. The gas from that axis account for 40 per cent of the gas supplied to the national grid. One of the greatest threats to the power sector today, is the constant pipeline vandalisation.
Aside from this, the corporation also recorded a huge financial loss in the month of April owing to major pipeline blown up by the militants in the Niger Delta which caused a serious drop in the crude oil supply for the month of April.
According to the financial and operations report for the month of April the volume of crude oil dropped from 59.27 million barrels in February to 57.43 million barrels in March thereby resulting into a loss of N19.43 billion.
In the same vein, there was operational loss of N 19.43bn in April 2016 as against 18.89bn in the month of March 2016.
The corporation while bemoaning the resurgence of vandalism of oil and gas facilities noted it has negatively affected crude oil production.
It stated that the crude oil production for the month of March was 57.43 million barrels, which was about 3.1 per drop from what was obtained in February.
“About 380,000barrels per day remained shut-in due to vandalism of the 48-inch subsea export line on 15th of February, 2016 and because of this all the cargoes for March were differed
The refining capacity of the Warri Refining and petrochemical company plummeted from 25.65 per cent in March to 6. 36 per cent in April.
The deficit increased by 2.83 per cent in the month of April 2016 due to slight decline in revenue generation, which is attributed to the decrease in petroleum product sales by 7.11 per cent.
The NPDC’s crude sale for the month is still hampered by Forcados pipeline vandalism, which continued to deny the NPDC of monthly crude oil revenue of about 20.0bn.
Olusola Bello
