By Innocent Obasi
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has reported a profit after tax of N674 billion for the 2021 financial year, an increase of 134.8 percent compared to N287 billion reported for the 2020 financial year.
Additionally, the shareholders fund rose to N2.81 trillion, indicating 144 percent increase from the previous year.
Prior to becoming profitable in 2020, NNPC recorded losses of N1.7 billion in 2019 and N803 billion in 2018.
Mele Kyari, NNPCL Group CEO, told journalists in Abuja that the upstream operation and its businesses in gas and power were responsible for the increase in profit.
Kyari clarified that the performance would have been greater if the operations in the year under review were free from incessant vandalism, crude oil and product theft, among others.
He remarked that despite challenging operating environment, “we strongly believe that NNPC has the potential to sustainably deliver better value to its esteemed shareholders”.
“Dividend is always governed by the dividend policy of every company. In this case, the shareholder is the country that includes 200 million Nigerians, represented by the Ministry of Petroleum Incorporated and the Ministry of Finance Incorporated in the case of NNPC Limited but for the corporation.
“The federation will decide what to do with this and currently there is a huge data between the obligations of the NNPCL and that of the corporation. We are sorting this out and it will be the decision of the shareholders to decide to either retain part of it or all of it.”
Responding to oil theft and pipeline vandalism, Kyari revealed that all significant oil trunk lines had been shut down as a result of these criminal activities.
“Today our production is around 1.23 million barrels per day. We have a proven production capacity of 2.49mbpd. But since COVID abated and the acts of vandals returned, we saw this gradual decline in our production to the point of the 1.2mbpd,” Kyari said.
“That means we can easily produce 2.49mbpd but we can’t do it because of acts of vandals. Now, it doesn’t mean that the difference between 2.49m and 1.23m is stolen. As we speak, all our major trunk lines are shut down, which means we are not flowing crude oil in these lines,” he said.
“We could do it and it doesn’t mean crude is stolen. When the lines are running, you can lose substantial part of that volume, up to 200,000 barrels,” he further said.
The group CEO said in actual losses today, the NNPCL budget level plan is to produce at 1.8mbpd “and if you are doing 1.23m, it means you are losing the difference between 1.23m and 1.8m which is around 600,000 barrels per day. This is an opportunity lost, not stolen”.
