Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, has confirmed recent speculation that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited does know the exact amount of petrol being consumed daily in Nigeria.
He spoke to journalists, led by his Senior Adviser, Media and Communications, Horatius Egua, in Abuja.
Sylva could not give details on the N3tn fuel subsidy proposal by NNPC, amid concerns about the country’s PMS consumption figure, saying the NNPC is better placed to answer any enquiry on that.
“I have made my views known about this issue in the past. NNPC has agreed with me that they are not certain about the exact consumption figure.”
He said the truth was that if the country’s petroleum products were smuggled outside the country, nobody could say what volume was involved today, tomorrow or next week, adding that NNPC could not say they know these figures.
“It’s more or less fueling a criminal economy. The NNPC imports the products, and nobody knows the exact destination of the products at the end of the day,” Sylva stated.
He added, “The imported products come to Nigeria, and from there filters out of our borders to neighbouring countries.
“So, as a country, we cannot tell the exact volume of petroleum products that we consume on a daily basis. All we have been doing is to assume the level of consumption over a period and work with that.”
He, however, expressed belief that the NNPC probably had a better answer to this, stressing that “personally, I dont.
“I have said this publicly before that I don’t know the figure. When I assumed office, initially I was told that our daily consumption was 66 million litres.
“Then, when fuel prices increased from N145 to N162, the consumption figure temporarily fell to about 40 something million litres per day, because the arbitrage opportunity reduced,” Sylva stated.
He added, “Then the value of the naira dropped again, and the number went up again to over 60 million litres. I am told the figure sometimes rise to as high as 90 or over 100 million litres. I don’t know how that happens.
