The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has again reported a month-end trading deficit of N11.22 billion in August.
The figure was obtained on the NNPC website detailing its monthly financial and operations report released in Abuja.
The corporation had posted a trading deficit of N24.18 billion loss in its July report.
NNPC, however, indicated that it was able to cut down on its loss-making by N12.96 billion when compared with its deficits in previous months.
The deficits were recorded even though two of its subsidiaries – the Pipeline and Products Marketing Company (PPMC) and Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) – had a good operational outing during the month.
The report also said crude oil production in Nigeria for the period averaged 1.65 million barrels per day (mbpd), representing a 6.47 per cent production decrease from the previous month.
The corporation in May, reported a profit of N273.74 million, thus reversing its reported average monthly losses of N35 billion.
It has, however, failed to sustain the profit-making streak, and has in the last two months, recorded deficits.
This indicates a trading deficit of N11.22 billion as against the reported July, 2016 deficit figure of N24.18 billion.
“This remarkable improvement in August 2016 was largely due to increase in PPMC coastal sales and the significant improvement in NPDC’s revenue for the month under review.
Meanwhile, NNPC has said that pipeline vandalism across the country has reduce by 28 per cent.
The corporation made this known in its 13th publication of Monthly Financial and Operations Report released on its website on Thursday.
According to the report, the spate of pipeline vandalism has reduced following the Federal Government and NNPC’s sustained engagements with Niger Delta militants.
“In August, 2016, there was 28.94 per cent drop in the number of pipelines vandalised points relative to July, 2016 which had up to 311 vandalised points,’’ the report stated.
On natural gas supply to power plants, the report stated that it edged up to 469 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd) which equalled about 2,083 megawatts of electricity generation in August, 2016.
On refineries’ operations, it report said that the combined value of output by the three refineries “at import parity price’’ for August, 2016 was N50.19 billion.
“Associated crude plus freight cost was N39.77 billion, giving a surplus of N709.21 million after an overhead of N9.71 billion,’’ it said.