Nigeria imports 63% of cooking gas supplied nationwide - PPPRA
Abuja -- Despite the abundant natural gas in the country, 63.25 per cent of Liquefied Petroleum Gas, LPG, also known as cooking gas, supplied in the Nigerian market in March 2021 was imported, according to latest data released by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA.
Specifically, the PPPRA, in its
LPG consumption data for March 2021, disclosed that this figure represented 77,840.600 metric tonnes of LPG in a vacuum, MT VAC, imported into the country in the month under review.
In general, the downstream petroleum industry regulator stated that a total of 123,076.332 MT VAC of LPG was supplied in the country in March 2021, rising by 32.71 per cent compared to 92,741.684 MT VAC of LPG supplied in February 2021; and 71.77 per cent higher than the 71,650.457 MT VAC supplied in March 2020.
The PPPRA report added that the volume of cooking gas imported in March 2021 was 76.19 per cent higher than the 44,179.668 MT VAC import in February 2021, and 97.47 per cent higher than the 39,419.820 MT VAC imported in March 2020.
The PPPRA disclosed that the cooking gas imported into the country were sourced from the United States of America, Argentina and Equatorial Guinea.
On the other hand, the report noted that 45,235.732 MT VAC of cooking gas was sourced locally in March 2021, representing 36.75 per cent of total gas supplied in the month under review.
The volume of LPG sourced locally in the month under review was 6.85 per cent lower than the 48,562.016 MT VAC sourced locally in February 2021, and 40.35 per cent higher than the 32,230.637 MT VAC gotten from the same source in March 2020.
The companies involved in the
Petroleum Gas/Natural Gas Liquid, LPG/NGL, and Escravos Gas To Liquid, EGTL, products were sold in January; while gas sales for Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas, NLNG, feedstock gas and Project Falcon stood at $52.24 million and $22.72 million respectively.
In addition, in its Monthly Financial and Operations Report for January 2021, the NNPC stated that in the gas sector, a total of 223.55 billion cubic feet, BCF, of natural gas was produced in the month of January 2021, translating to an average daily production of 7.22 billion standard cubic feet of gas per day, a 4.79 per cent increase over the output recorded in December 2020.
According to the NNPC, the daily average natural gas supply to gas power plants increased by 2.38 percent to 836 billion cubic feet per day, equivalent to power generation of 3,415 megawatts, MW, while it noted that for the period of January 2020 to January 2021, a total of 2.97 trillion cubic feet of gas was produced, representing an average daily production of 7.586 billion cubic feet of gas per day during the period.
The NNPC said: “Period-to-date production from Joint Ventures (JV), Production Sharing Contracts (PSC), and Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), contributed about 65.20 per cent, 19.97 per cent and 14.83 per cent respectively to the total national gas production.
“Out of the total gas output in January 2021, a total of 149.24 BCF of gas was commercialised consisting of 44.29 BCF and 104.95 BCF for the domestic and export markets respectively. This translates to a total supply of 1.429 billion cubic feet per day of gas to the domestic market and 3.386 billion cubic feet per day of gas to the export market in the month under review.”