ABUJA— Nigeria’s woes in the area of dwindling revenue from crude oil
sales is expected to heighten in the next couple of days, as the South
African Petroleum Industry Association, SAPIA, yesterday, stated that
South Africa would likely stop importing crude oil from Nigeria
following the lifting of the sanctions on Iran.
fuel-pumpExecutive
Director of the SAPIA, Avhapfani Tshifularo, told journalists that the
potential return of Iranian oil exports to South Africa threaten to
displace barrels from Saudi Arabia and Nigeria that plugged the supply
gap when sanctions were imposed on Iran, which is OPEC’s fifth biggest
producer.
He said: “The re-emergence of Iranian crude oil
provides options for those willing to buy from Iran.
Iranian imports are
likely to displace the Nigerian and Saudi Arabian crudes, since they
seem to have filled the gap since South Africa stopped importing Iranian
crude oil.”
Furthermore, data compiled by SAPIA from refiners
showed that South Africa stopped importing crude oil from Iran in 2013,
following which its oil imports from Nigeria rose significantly, with
Saudi Arabia emerging the highest exporter of crude to the country.
Recent
data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, had showed
that a sharp decline was recorded in revenue accruable to the Federal
Government from the petroleum sector, as the country’s earnings from
crude oil export dropped to N5.271 trillion for the nine month period,
January to September 2015.
The NBS, in its Foreign Trade
Statistics for the Third Quarter of 2015, had noted that the value of
Nigeria’s crude oil export for the nine month period 2015, represented a
decline of 45.39 per cent or N4.381 trillion when compared to crude oil
export of N9.652 trillion recorded in the same period in 2014.
It
also represented a decline of 55.67 per cent or N6.62 trillion when
compared to total crude oil earnings of N11.891 trillion recorded in
2014.
Giving a breakdown of Nigeria’s crude oil earnings in
nine-month 2015, the NBS data revealed that the country earned N1.675
trillion from crude oil export in the first quarter of 2015, N1.984
trillion and N1.611 trillion in the second and third quarters
respectively.
This was in contrast to crude oil export earnings
of N3.234 trillion, N3.269 trillion and N3.149 trillion for the first,
second and third quarters respectively, while in the fourth quarter of
2014, the country earned N2.239 trillion from the export of the
commodity in the fourth quarter of 2015.
Further breakdown of the
2015 figures showed that the country earned N505.898 billion, N591.964
billion, N577.361 billion, N698.387 billion and N668.526 billion in
January, February, March, April and May respectively.
In the
months of June, July, August and September, Nigeria’s crude oil export
stood at N617.364 billion, N572.813 billion, N512.823 billion and
N525.857 billion respectively.
Source: Vanguard
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