Nigeria remains stuck on imported fuel as 20.8bn litres of petrol was shipped in 2019

... PPPRA clears marketers to import petrol

Africa’s biggest oil producer imported 20.89bn litres of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) in 2019, which comes to about 57.2 million litres every day, to augment supply from the country’s rickety refineries, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show.

Nigeria has a problem. The country is one of the world’s largest exporters, yet it remains heavily dependent on the importationofpetroleumproducts since its four major oil refineries have been under-utilised.

According to NBS report, PMS is currently topping the chart on the volume of refined petroleum products imported into the country, as a total of 20.89 billion litres was brought into the country in 2019.

Other imported petroleum products include Automotive Gas Oil (AGO) of 5.15 billion litres, Household Kerosene (HHK) of 128.1 million litres, aviationturbinekerosene(atk) of 1.o7bn litres, Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO) of 45.98 million litres and Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) of 526.06 million litres.

Yomi Akinola, an analyst with the rating agency Agusto & Co said access to credit from financial institutions given the weak financial condition of operators (particularly independent marketers), who are burdened by soaring receivables from the Federal Government of Nigeria under the Petroleum Support Fund programme, as a major constraint to growth.

In terms of distribution and consumption, the Agusto report stated that Lagos leads in PMS, AGO, LPG, Aviation fuel consumption given the strong population in the state as well as the fact that a good number of airlines prefer to refuel in Lagos.

“Rivers leads in consumption of household kerosene (HHK). This has seen significant reduction because of the increase in the use of cooking gas by people,” Akinola said in an Agusto report.

Also, information gathered from Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) revealed private oil marketers have now joined the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in the importation of petrol.

Before the downstream oil sector was liberalised in March this year, the NNPC used to be the sole importer of petrol, a task it handled for more than two years.

“Many of them (marketers) have gone to import because they took QMS from us to bring in products and I am sure they are doing that already,” PPPRA’S General Manager of Corporate Services, Kimchi Apollo, said.