There is a need for stakeholders and agencies in the petroleum sector to harmonise their figures to reach acceptable statistics on Nigeria’s daily petrol consumption. This stems from the different figures from different government agencies which gives the impression that activities of these agencies are not transparent. According to latest figures from the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Nigeria’s consumption of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS also known as petrol is put at 80 million litres per day. This is even as the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, and the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR at different times had disagreed over data for actual daily consumption.
According to the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA’s latest daily truck out statistics published on its website, as at April, 8, 2021, actual consumption per day was 80.23million litres. The Ministry and the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR as at last June had given different data on how many litres of the products Nigeria utilises daily.
While the DPR indicated that the country consumes 38.2 million litres daily, the Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva had said daily consumption stood at 52 million. However, PPPRA’s latest data puts April 8 consumption at 80.23m litres. The PPPRA’s data showed that the truck out came from 54 depots across the country.
While Lagos State received the highest supply with 296 trucks amounting to 10.95 million litres, Kano State was next with 169 trucks carrying 7.95 litres of petrol. Niger, Oyo and Ogun received 106, 103, and 94 trucks with 4.65 million, 3.99 million and 3.86 million litres respectively.
Jigawa State received no trucks while Nasarawa, Bayelsa and Ebonyi states received 7, 7 and 10 trucks with 294,007, 305,000 and 466,000 litres of petrol respectively.
The PPPRA report also showed that AITEO with 100 truck-out and 4.63 million litres of petrol was the most active depot. It was followed by Matrix which had 122 truck-out carrying 5.35 million litres of petrol. AA Rano, PPMC Mosimi, and Prudent depots trucked out 97, 86 and 70 with 4.46 million, 3.34 million and 2.67 million litres of petrol respectively.
However, the daily petrol consumption statistics appear not static, as the Agency reported different data for different days. For instance, while 80.23million litres were reported for April 8, 79.8milliom litres were reported for April 9. The Agency also reported a truck out of 54.9million litres on April 10. Analysts are of the view that the instability in the daily consumption statistics by the Ministry and DPR could be as a result of unequal daily supply and truck out at the depots.