Senators yesterday asked the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to explain how the 445,000 barrels of crude oil allocated to it daily are managed.
The Senate adhoc committee probing the management of fuel subsidy issued the verbal query yesterday at its resumed sitting in Abuja.
Chairman of the Joint Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream, Appropriations and Finance, Senator Magnus Abe asked the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the NNPC, Mr. Austin Oniwon, to confirm that the corporation receives 445,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Oniwon replied in the affirmative.
A member of the committee, Senator Hayatu Gwarzo, asked Oniwon to give a breakdown of how the 445,000 barrels are allocated.
Oniwon said 170,000 barrels are refined locally in Warri (80,000 barrels) and Port Harcourt  refineries 90,000 barrels per day.
He added that 60,000 barrels are refined in Societe Ivoirienne de Raffinage (SIR) – (Simple Oil Refinery in Vridi), Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire and 90,000 barrels are daily swapped by the NNPC with Trafigura, an oil company based in Britain.
The remaining 65,000 barrels of crude are sold by the NNPC daily.
A check on the website of SIR shows its total installed production capacity per day is 60,000 barrels, an indication that it only refines Nigeria’s crude.
It was also discovered that NNPC realises $6.5m (N1, 007,500,000) daily from the sale of 65,000 barrels of crude oil at $100 per barrels using current exchange rate of N155 to the Dollar and an average price of $100 per barrel.
Apparently not satisfied with the explanation of the GMD and the Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), Mr Reginald Elija, who also appeared before the committee, the senators said would appear before them on another day to clear the grey areas.
Some of the grey areas include the inability of the NNPC GMD to supply data on how many litres of fuel is derived from one barrel of crude oil when it is refined, the lopsided deregulation of kerosene and diesel, and the lack of data on how Nigeria stands to benefit or lose from the daily swapping of 90,000 barrels of crude oil with Trafigura.
Although the NNPC boss denied that crude is diverted to private companies from its 445,000 daily allocation, the senators were not persuaded.
Besides, the NNPC did not list the countries from where Nigeria imports petroleum products, especially in Africa.