The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has revealed that it raised domestic gas supply to the power sector by 20 million standard cubic feet per day leading to an increase in power generation by 117 megawatts.
In its latest financial and operations report obtained in Abuja, the corporation said it supplied 727mmscfd of gas in August 2020, indicating an increase of 20mmscfd over the 707mmscfd of gas that it supplied in the preceding month of July.
This, based on analysis of the report, led to an increase in the country’s power generation by 117MW.
Findings showed that while the 707mmscfd of gas supplied in July led to the generation of 2,421MW of electricity, the 727mmscfd gas supplied in August produced 2,538MW of power.
This came as the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission announced on its website that based on the various submissions at the public hearings of power distribution companies, consumers were willing to pay a tariff commensurate to the services received from the utilities.
The commission said its Multi-Year Tariff Order 2020 gave rise to the concept of the service reflective tariff effective September 1, 2020.
Providing further details on domestic gas supply to the power sector, NNPC said, “A total of 707mmscfd was delivered to gas-fired power plants in the month of July 2020 to generate an average power of about 2,421MW compared with June 2020 when an average of 728mmscfd was supplied to generate 2,717MW.”
In the latest report, the corporation explained that for natural gas off-take, commercialisation and utilisation, out of the 233.64 billion standard cubic feet of gas supplied in August 2020, a total of 147.71BCF of gas was commercialised.
This, it said, consisted of 37.51BCF and 110.21BCF for the domestic and export market respectively.
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It said, “This translates to a total supply of 1,250.3mmscfd of gas to the domestic market and 3,506.22mmscfd of gas supplied to the export market for the month.
“This implies that 63.22 per cent of the average daily gas produced was commercialised while the balance of 36.78 per cent was re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared.
“Gas flare rate was 5.83 per cent for the month under review, i.e. 439.30mmscfd compared with average gas flare rate of 7.52 per cent, i.e. 583.40mmscfd for the period August 2019 to August 2020.”
The national oil firm said total gas supply for the period August 2019 to August 2020 stood at 3,058.9BCF out of which 460.23BCF and 1,392.69BCF were commercialised for the domestic and export market respectively.
It said gas re–injected, fuel gas and gas flared stood at 1,205.98BCF, adding that out of the 1,250.3mmscfd of gas supplied to the domestic market in August 2020, about 726.96mmscfd of gas representing 58.14 per cent was supplied to gas-fired power plants.
NNPC said the balance of 523.34mmscfd or 41.86 per cent was supplied to other industries.
Similarly, for the period of August 2019 to August 2020, an average of 1,171.79mmscfd of gas was supplied to the domestic market comprising an average of 679.83mmscfd or 58.02 per cent as gas supply to the power plants and 491.96mmscfd or 41.98 per cent as gas supply to industries.
