- Refineries Make Profit for First Time in 10 Months
The nation’s refineries have posted a profit for the first in 10 months, the latest financial and operations report of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has shown.
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 NNPC.
The corporation said total crude processed by the WRPC and the PHRC in April was 127,476 metric tonnes while the KRPC only processed intermediate 7,069MT.
“This translates to a combined yield efficiency of 58.73 per cent as against the 83.64 per cent in March 2018,” it said.
The three refineries produced 252,843MT of finished petroleum products and 177,976MT of intermediate products, out of the 127,476MT of crude processed at a combined capacity utilisation of seven per cent, compared to 14.41 per cent in March.
The NNPC said, “The decrease in operational performance recorded is attributable to the downturn in the KRPC during the month. The ongoing revamping of the refineries will enhance capacity utilisation once completed.
“The corporation has been adopting a merchant plant refineries business model since January 2017. 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 the month amounted to N33.74bn while the associated crude plus freight costs and operational expenses were N20.30bn and N12.52bn, respectively. This resulted in an operating surplus of N0.93bn by the refineries.”
According to the corporation, 1,510.35million litres of petrol were supplied into the country through the Direct Sale, Direct Purchase arrangements as against the 2,383.46million litres supplied in March.
The NNPC said it was taking steps to actualise the December 2019 target set by the Federal Government to end the importation of petroleum products into the country.
“The tendering exercise for companies interested in the rehabilitation programmes of the nation’s four refineries using a contractor-financing model had been completed and successful companies for the different projects would soon be announced.”
