The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) incurred a loss to the tune of N240,304,755,518 as under-recovered expenditure in importing petrol at the international market price and selling at the federal government’s regulated pump price of N145 per litre between March 2017 and March 2018, a period of 13 month.

This is contained in the corporation’s monthly financial report made available to SUPERNEWS.

According to the report, which showed that 80.26 million litres of petrol was consumed in March 2018, also indicated that in February 2018, Nigeria’s oil production volumes declined by about 7.588 million barrels on account of multiple production shut-ins mostly on crude oil export terminals and pipelines.

Under-recovery is another term to describe subsidy, which arises as a result of the difference between the landing cost of refined products and the official prices.

The corporation in its March 2018 financial and operations report – the latest so far, indicated that it lost N240.3 billion for keeping petrol pump price at N145 per litre at that period, and this loss represents the amount that should be paid to it afterwards as petrol subsidy claims, assuming the federal government is still operating the subsidy regime.

The monthly report was released in Abuja by the NNPC and obtained by

According to the NNPC report, N240,304,755,518 was recorded as under recovery for the 13-month period; N17,619,360,579 recorded as crude oil losses; products losses was N8,334,022,400; while pipeline repair and management costs resulted in N129,688,449,152.

A further breakdown of the figures indicated that in March 2017, NNPC recorded an under-recovery of N8,206,727,836; in April, it was N8,206,727,836; and in May, it was N7,743,923,020; and between June, July, August, September, October, November, and December of 2017, the corporation netted under-recoveries of N11,792,197,288; N10,250,012,947; N7,938,985,582; N7,521,590,052; N6,848,622,525; N16,785,193,827; and N15,676,576,185, respectively.

In January 2018, it recorded N45,782,705,844 as under-recovery; N59,519,058,738 in February; and then N34,032,433,839 in March.

NNPC said: “In the downstream sector, NNPC continued to ensure increased petrol supply and effective distribution across the country. In March, 2018, 2.49 billion litres of petrol were supplied by NNPC translating to 80.26 million litres/day to sustain seamless distribution of petroleum products and zero fuel queue across the nation.