Demand for Petrol Rises in September
By Mike Oduniyi and Chinazor Megbolu
Demand for premium motor spirit (PMS), otherwise known as petrol, peaked at 36.158 million litres daily early this month, up from 30 million litres.
Available statistics released by the Department of Petrol-eum Resources (DPR), showed that marketers were however, only able to supply 72.7 percent or 26.28 million litres of the estimated national daily peak demand.
The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), the Nigerian Na-tional Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and oil marketers relied on the 30 million litres per day consumption for supply statistics.
Analysts, however, attributed the 20.5 percent increase in the petrol demand to the increasing use of the fuel in the country.
"Petrol has become more dominant in our economic life. Now we see more cars on the road, and more importantly, more petrol is being used to power private generator sets that are now increasingly in use become of the failure of public power supply," an official said.
The increase in daily national fuel demand, implied that marketers (both majors and independent and majors) will earn a total revenue of N172.5 billion from the sales of the product in the last quarter of this year.
The income is predicated on the average pump price of N53 per litre of PMS, introduced last Thursday, following a corresponding increase in the ex-depot price of petrol effected by the NNPC.
Of the daily supply of 26.28 million litres of petrol, the local refineries supplied only about seven million litres or 27 percent. The remaining 73 percent came from imports.
According to the DPR report, the Warri refinery was still not operational during the week. "The refinery process units remained on shutdown. Turn Around Maintenance activities at the petrochemical plant are on-going," it said.
On the other hand, the Port Harcourt refinery was only able to process an average of 84,643 barrels per day (bpd), which is 40.31 percent of its installed capacity of 210,000 bpd, said the DPR.
Also the 110,000 bpd Kaduna refinery was aslo not operational during the first two weeks of this month. "It was shutdown due to lack of Arabian light crude oil supply and lack of feed for NHU and CRU."
Speaking to THISDAY on the refinery situation, NNPC Group Managing Director, Engineer Funsho Kupolokun, attributed the
low output from the local refineries to first the pipeline problem in Warri, which affected crude supply to the Kaduna and Warri refineries.
The pipeline buried in the Chanomi Creek area of Delta State, was blown up last year by suspected arsonists.
Kupolokun said the line should be ready for use by October 16 this year.
The corporation, he added, was currently barging about 50,000 bpd of crude from the Ughelli Quality Control Centre (UQCC). "But the production volume is constraint as a result of limitation in what could get to Kaduna again because of the Chanomi Creek pipeline," he said.
NNPC said it was losing about N500 million daily to subsidise the huge volume of fuel imports sold in the local market. The corporation seemed to have got a relief last week when the Federal High Court in Abuja ruling barred the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) from protesting the imposition of fuel tax.
The NNPC subsequently raised the depot price of fuel, delivering petrol to marketers at N44.50 a litre up from N33.50.
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