The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Mele Kyari, has revealed that NNPC has the records of the amount of petrol being lifted from various depots daily but it does not know the exact litres of oil being consumed in the country per day.
Kyari stated this at an interactive hearing on “Exiting Petroleum Subsidy: Ensuring Self – Sufficiency in Domestic Refining of Petroleum Products”.
The event was organised by the Joint Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream and Downstream).
The corporation disclosed that the daily consumption of petrol in Nigeria, based on product evacuation record at the depot, is at about 54 million litres.
Speaking at the event, Kyari said, “We don’t know how much petroleum we consume daily in this country but we know how much of the product that is taken out of our depot.
“This year, around 54 million litres of petroleum product are evacuated from the depot daily but the consumption is somewhere below that.
“NNPC has no knowledge of the amount of the product that are transported through Nigeria’s borders to neighbouring countries.
“It is impossible to know, nobody declares it, and therefore as it crosses, it goes.”
He added that the price of fuel at the borders is higher than the official rate.
READ ALSO: Lagos closes Pen Cinema for Road Works
He said, “There are open borders across the West African sub-region.
“It is impossible to stop cross border supply of products. No amount of policing or control that anyone can put in place can stop that.”
He said the only way to stop this “is to walk away from subsidy so that we can have stability.”
He told the senators that the NNPC was working with the Central Bank of Nigeria to stabilise the forex market for all.
He said the arrangement would enable the oil marketers to have access to foreign exchange at market rate and get the product at market price.
