TheCable

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says vandalism of pipelines across the country increased by 50 percent in February.

This is contained in the NNPC monthly financial and operations report for February 2021 released on Thursday.

In January, NNPC recorded a 37.21 reduction in pipeline vandalism across the country.

The agency had announced that 27 pipeline points were vandalised in January compared to 43 points recorded in December 2020.

But according to the report, the level of vandalism increased in February as 54 pipelines were destroyed, representing a 50 percent increase.

It said Warri area accounted for 50 percent of the vandalised points, Mosimi area accounted for 39 percent, while Kaduna and Port Harcourt areas accounted for seven percent and four percent respectively.

NNPC noted that trading surplus during the period under review rose to N39.85 billion.

The commission said the figure represents a 314.24 percent increase from the N9.62 billion surplus it recorded in the preceding month.

Trading surplus or trading deficit is derived after deduction of the expenditure from the revenue for the period under review.

The report noted that NNPC group operating revenue in February increased by 35.64 percent or N152.07 billion to stand at N578.79 billion.

It also noted that expenditure for the month increased by 29.21 percent or N121.83 billion to stand at N538.94 billion.

NNPC attributed the increase in trading surplus to reconciled accounts by its downstream subsidiary, the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC), using the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) pricing template.

Other factors included the performance of Duke Oil, Nigerian Gas Company (NGC) and Nigerian Gas Marketing Company (NGMC) which recorded high gains as a result of increased debt collection and cost optimisation measures.