Latest figures from the financial and operations report of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, have shown that the imports of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, (or petrol) imports in January 2021 rose by 100 million litres when compared to what was imported in December 2020.
This is following the dormancy of Nigeria’s refineries of refine crude. It, however, said in the report that no petrol had been produced by the refineries for about 13 months running.
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NNPC is the sole importer of petrol into Nigeria and the corporation manages the country’s refineries in Kaduna, Port Harcourt and Warri.
In its latest report, the NNPC said it imported 1.68 billion litres of petrol through the DSDP, while 1.58 billion litres PMS was imported in the preceding month.
The corporation said, “In January 2021, 1,682.44 million litres of PMS were supplied into the country through the DSDP arrangement as against the 1,582.56 million litres of PMS supplied in the month of December 2020.”
Under the section of petroleum products supply from domestic refineries, the oil firm stated that the facilities were dormant in terms of crude oil refining and that this had stretched for over a year.
NNPC said, “No white product (PMS and Dual-Purpose Kerosene) was produced in January 2021 and apparently for the past 12 consecutive months. The lack of production is due to ongoing rehabilitation works at the refineries.”
In explaining the DSDP, the oil firm stated that in compliance with the Public Procurement Act 2007 and NNPC’s Policy and Procedures, it had to engage qualified and credible companies in a Direct Sale of crude oil and Direct Purchase of petroleum product to ensure sustained product supply across the country.
The oil firm had over the years adopted the scheme to ensure petrol imports into Nigeria, being the sole importer of the commodity, while other marketers had avoided PMS imports due to inaccessibility of the dollar