Nigeria’s daily PMS usage was estimated at 66 million liters by the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA).
The midstream and downstream regulatory agency said in a statement released yesterday in Abuja that numbers coming from various agencies and other stakeholders made the explanation essential.
According to NMDPRA, it is based on pertinent portions of the Petroleum Industry Act 2021, which mandates that the Authority post the numbers on its website.
The statement added: “In line with the NMDPRA mandate as provided in the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) to ensure transparency in the oil and gas industry, the Authority publishes on its website the actual daily truck-out. From 1st January to 31 July 2022, the daily truck-out stands at 66 million litres.”
It emphasized the necessity to give context to media claims on the typical daily truck leaving PMS in 2022.
Contributions from various agencies are included in the Medium-Term Expenditure and Revenue Framework (MTERF) of the Federal Government, a three-year forward-looking budgeting instrument. For this planning purpose, the Authority and its heritage organizations provide annual truck-out projections.
The Authority stated 62.9 million liters as the baseline daily truck out prediction for 2022 based on the actual daily truck out volume of 61.9 million liters in 2021 during an interactive session with the House of Representatives Committee on Finance.
In order to be clear, the Authority stated that the reported number was only used to project the anticipated revenue for 2022 and is in no way equivalent to the actual truck out volume for this year.
The general public was given the reassurance that the company is committed to giving accurate and transparent information on the supply and distribution of petroleum products.
The Nigerian Customs Service’s Comptroller General, Col. Hameed Ali (retd), testified before the same committee and refuted the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited’s assertion that the nation consumes about 60 million liters of premium motor spirit, or PMS, each day. He claimed the calculation was flawed and improbable.
The head of customs questioned why NNPC Ltd would allow the daily lifting of around 98 million liters from the storage when the nation only requires 60 million.
Ali denied allegations that the vast sums of money the government spent on subsidies was due to the smuggling of PMS.
“I have always argued this with NNPC. If we are consuming 60 million litres of petrol per day by their computation, why in the world would you allow the lifting of 98 million litres per day? ” He asked.
The Customs CG emphasized that the NNPC’s computation is unreliable and pointed out that daily consumption varies.
“That computation, to me, is not believable, because scientifically you cannot tell me that if I fill my tank today, tomorrow I will fill my tank with the same quantity of fuel. And if I’m running a petrol station today, if I go to Minna depot and lift, and I’m taking to Kaduna, I may reach Kaduna in the evening and offload that product; there’s no way I could have sold that petrol for you to account for the expense.
NNPC emphasized that the results were averages for a particular time period.
The statement continued, “The calculations are empirically based on truck-out that is supervised by relevant government bodies, and use daily, weekly, and monthly consumption to arrive at the figures.”
