The nation’s refineries, which have been operating below their installed capacities for many years, made a record loss of N20.08bn in May, the highest in at least three years.
The plants are the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company, the Port Harcourt Refining Company and the Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company.
The refineries, which lost a total of N80.21bn from July 2017 to March 2018, posted a profit of N928.81m in April, according to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
The NNPC, in its latest financial and operations report of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation obtained by our correspondent on Friday, said Port Harcourt refinery lost N8.69bn, while Warri posted a loss of N7.16bn.
Kaduna refinery, which was idle in May, recorded a deficit of N4.22bn, the data showed.
Total crude processed by the WRPC and the PHRC in May was 378,634 metric tonnes, translating to a combined yield efficiency of 91.42 per cent as against the 58.73 per cent in April.
The NNPC said the three refineries produced 214,328MT of finished petroleum products and 131,810MT of intermediate products out of the 378,634MT of crude processed at a combined capacity utilisation of 20.12 per cent, compared to the seven per cent achieved in April.
It attributed the increase in operational performance to the ongoing revamping of the refineries, which it said would further enhance capacity utilisation once completed.
The corporation said it had been adopting a merchant plant refineries business model since January 2017.
It said, “The model takes cognizance of the products worth and crude costs. The combined value of output by the three refineries (at import parity price) for May 2018 amounted to N58.28bn while the associated crude plus freight costs and operational expenses were N64.86bn and N13.5bn, respectively. This resulted in an operating deficit of N20.09bn by the refineries.”
In May, 1,096.45 million litres of Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) were supplied to the country through the Direct Sale Direct Purchase arrangement as against the 1,510.35 million litres of the PMS supplied in April.
According to the NNPC, the petroleum products (the PMS and Dual Purpose kerosene) production by the domestic refineries in May amounted to 161.91 million litres compared to 125.86 million litres in April.
The corporation reaffirmed its commitment to actualise the December 2019 target set by the Federal Government to end the importation of petroleum products into the country.
It said, “The tendering exercise for companies interested in the rehabilitation programmes of the nation’s four refineries using a contractor-financing model has been completed and successful companies for the different projects will soon be announced.
“Also, so far, about 35 expressions of interest for the establishment of modular refineries have been declared and the Department of Petroleum Resources has issued licences to 13 of them.
