Nigeria: Over 3.6mln barrels of crude delivered in 20 months

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The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) said it delivered 3,614,936 barrels of crude to three local refineries between September 2021 and May 2023.

Oil marketers had on Monday lamented the inadequate supply of crude oil to modular refineries citing this as a major setback in lifting refined products from them.

But in a statement on Thursday, the Commission said as against insinuations, only refineries that comply with the relevant requirements of Section 109 of the Petroleum Industry Act, 2021 are entitled to crude supply.

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It said between January 2019 and August 2021 the period before the PIA came into effect, 1,726,049 barrels of oil were supplied to two refineries that met the requirements of the law as at the time.

“The two refineries are operated by Walter Smith and NDPR. The post PIA supplies were made to Walter Smith, NDPR and OPAC refineries,” the statement partly read.

While disclosing efforts made to ensure supply of feedstock to the refineries, the Commission said it recently granted approval for Millennium Oil and Gas Limited to supply by trucking, 60,000 barrels of crude oil at the rate of 20,000 barrels per month for three months to OPAC and Duport refineries in Edo State.

In addition, it stated that alternate evacuation routes such as trucking of crude oil to refineries has been approved to forestall potential downtime during refinery operations which might arise due to non-availability or vandalism of pipelines.

To this end, it said, “any refinery operator or group of refinery operators in Nigeria not receiving or claiming not to be receiving feedstock from appropriate agencies are yet to satisfy the mandatory requirements as stipulated by law.”

The National President, Natural Oil and Gas Suppliers Association of Nigeria (NOGASA), Bennett Korie, had at a briefing in Abuja, asked the Federal Government to prioritize supply of crude oil to modular refineries as a way of ensuring cost-effectiveness.

“There is a need for government to sell crude oil to these refineries at least we have modular refineries of 5000 to 10,000 barrels per day.

“We lift from them but sometimes, we lift this week then the following week we won’t lift because they say no crude oil. So we don’t rely on them because we don’t get enough. If they are getting crude oil on a daily basis, they will make impact,” he said.