MOSCOW (MRC) -- The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has made a profit for the first time in its 44-year history, generating an income of 287 billion naira (USD698 million) after tax in 2020, reported Reuters with reference to President Muhammadu Buhari's statement.
Buhari, who also holds the title of minister of petroleum resources, gave no explanation for the state company's swing to profit in 2020, a year when the economic shock caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic triggered a slump in the oil price.
"This development is consistent with this administration's commitment to ensuring prudent management of resources and maximisation of value for the Nigerian people from their natural resources," Buhari said in a statement.
NNPC, which operates joint production ventures with Western oil majors and is also involved in refining and marketing petroleum products, made losses of 803 billion naira in 2018 and 1.7 billion naira in 2019 but has otherwise released few details of its finances for most of its history.
Anti-corruption campaigners have long been asking for NNPC to be more transparent, and last year it published audited 2019 accounts of 20 of its subsidiaries in what it said was a historical first.
As MRC wrote before, earlier this month, Nigeria gave its state oil firm the green light to acquire a 20% stake in Dangote's oil refinery for USD2.76 billion, reported. The 650,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery, owned by Africa's richest man Aliko Dangote, is under construction in Lagos, the biggest city in the most fuel-consuming nation in the region. The refinery is scheduled for commissioning by January.
We remind that loadings of Nigeria's key crude grade Forcados are on force majeure due to some operational issues at the export terminal, according to Shell's statement Aug. 16. Force majeure was declared effective Aug. 13 due to "the curtailment of production and suspension of export operations as a result of some sheen noticed on the water around the loading buoy," Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd. said in a statement.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,176,860 tonnes in the first half of 2021, up by 5% year on year. Shipments of exclusively low density polyethylene (LDPE) decreased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 727,160 tonnes in the first six months of 2021, up by 31% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased. Supply of statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers) subsided.
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