The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has saved the federation $336.4m (about N66bn) in the first four months after cancelling the contract for petroleum product import called crude oil swap.
The state-run oil firm, had in April replaced the offshore processing arrangement (OPA) and crude oil swap – contracts through which it imports petrol to the country – with the Direct Sale Direct Purchase (DSDP) arrangement.
It cancelled the swaps after years of heavy criticism trailed the contracts whose terms not only short-changed the Nigerian treasury but were skewed in favour of private oil traders or middlemen and briefcase companies.
NNPC in its latest in-house publication, Energy in Brief, said the management of the new DSDP framework adopted in April to ensure supply of refined fuel, earned an average $53m monthly saving for the Corporation. These savings, it said, had resulted to a total of $336,379,854.98 for it in four months – April to July 2016.
NNPC in 2010 initiated the Swap and OPA to import white fuels because the refineries could not meet local daily demands.
These contracts, according to independent and government commissioned audits, were not beneficial to Nigeria.
Nigeria lost $966m to the oil swap deals between 2009 and 2012, according to the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI).
A NEITI 2013 Audit report released recently showed loss of revenue to the federation to the tune of $518m comprising $211.8m to OPA and $306m lost to Swap deals.
