by Azeez Adeniyi

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) lost N197.49bn at the end of the 2016 financial year.

This was in a report the corporation released on its website on Thursday.

The report revealed that the corporation had a revenue of N1.726tn and an expense of N1.923tn last year.

According to the report, the refineries lost N77.84bn and earned N1.11bn.

The NNPC said, “This represents a decrease of N1.71bn in trading deficit as against November 2016. The marginal decrease is due to improved PPMC (Pipelines and Product Marketing Company) coastal sales following the completion of reconciliation with other marketers.

“Other factors that affected the overall NNPC’s performance include the force majeure declared by SPDC (Shell Petroleum Development Company) as a result of the vandalised 48-inch Forcados export line after the restoration on October 17, 2016, among others.”

NNPC said oil production in November increased by up to 1.92 million barrels per day.

“This month’s performance is attributed to the Federal Government’s overtures to Niger Delta militants towards providing a lasting peace to the crisis. However, some of the major drag to our performance includes the subsisting force majeure at the Forcados and Brass terminals, and shutdown of two NCTL flow stations following pipeline leakages,” it said.

NNPC said pipeline sabotage has reduced since the Federal Government showed interest in dialoguing with stakeholders from the Niger Delta.

“Only 18 downstream pipeline vandalised points were recorded in the month as against 43 in November 2016. This also represents 69.77 per cent reduction relative to the previous month,” it added.