ABUJA – The Nigerian National Petro­leum Corporation (NNPC) said that 54 petroleum pipeline points were vandalised in Feb­ruary 2021.

The corporation disclosed this on its Monthly Finan­cial and Operations Report (MFOR) for the month of Feb­ruary released in Abuja, on Thursday.

It said the number repre­sented 50 percent increase from 27 points recorded in January this year.

“During the period under review, 54 pipeline points were vandalised representing 50 per­cent increase from the 27 points recorded in January 2021.

“The Warri Area account­ed for 50 percent and Mosimi Area accounted for 39 percent of the vandalized points while Kaduna and Port Harcourt Ar­eas accounted for seven percent and four percent, respectively,” it said.

According to the report, the NNPC said it will continue to work in collaboration with the local communities and other stakeholders to eliminate the menace of pipeline vandalism.

Also, in the period under re­view, the report revealed that the corporation made N39.85 billion trading surplus, repre­senting a massive 314.24 per­cent leap from the N9.62 billion surplus it recorded in January.

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

“NNPC Group operating revenue as compared to Jan­uary 2021, increased by 35.64 percent or N152.07 billion to stand at N578.79 billion.

“Similarly, expenditure for the month increased by 29.21 percent or N121.83 billion to stand at N538.94 billion.

“The expenditure for the month as a proportion of revenue was 0.93 percent as against 0.98 percent the previ­ous month,” it said.

The report attributed the significant increase in trad­ing surplus to reconciled ac­counts by the corporation’s downstream subsidiary, the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC), using the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) pricing template.

Other factors that boosted the trading surplus figure, according to the corporation, included the performance of Duke Oil, Nigerian Gas Com­pany (NGC) and Nigerian Gas Marketing Company (NGMC) which recorded robust gains as a result of increased debt col­lection and cost optimisation measures.

On supply of premium mo­tor spirit (PMS) also known as petrol, it said that the corpora­tion supplied a total of 1.41 bil­lion litres of petrol translating to 50.52 million litres/day.

In terms of natural gas offtake, commercialisation and utilisation, out of the 206.05 bil­lion cubic feet (BCF) produced in February 2021, a total of 133.06BCF was commercial­ised consisting of 40.15BCF and 92.91BCF for the domestic and export market, respectively.

This, it said, translated to a total supply of 1,433.75 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd) of gas to the domes­tic market and 3,318.25mmscfd of gas supplied to the export market for the month.

According to the MFOR, it implies that 64.48 percent of the average daily gas produced was commercialised while the balance of 35.52 percent was re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared.

The report also revealed that gas flare rate was 7.67 percent for the month under review (i.e. 565.52mmscfd) compared with average gas flare rate of 7.12 percent (i.e. 529.20mmscfd) for the period of February 2020 to February 2021.

The February 2021 NNPC Monthly Financial and Oper­ations Report is the 67th in the series.