THE Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has achieved a remarkable reduction in the cases of pipeline sabotage.

This was disclosed in the Corporation’s just-released  monthly Financial and Operations Report for the month of December 2016.

According to the report, only 18 cases of vandalised points on downstream pipelines were recorded in December 2016 as against 43 in the previous month.

The downward trend in the cases of pipeline sabotage, according to the report, was due to sustained engagement with stakeholders by the Federal Government and Corporation.

The report also indicated a 13.4 per cent rise in oil and gas sales in December 2016 over sales in November 2016.

A total export sale of $195.40 million was recorded for crude oil and gas in the month under review as against the sum of $166.18 million recorded in November 2016.

“This is $20.22 million higher than the preceding month’s performance. Crude oil export sales contributed $100.37 million (or 51.36%) of the dollar transactions compared with $96.31 contribution in the previous month”, the report stated.

The report put the total export sales of crude oil and gas from January to December 2016 at $2,445,451,363.

The report also indicated that the total export proceeds of $175.04 million for the month of December 2016 was “remitted to fund the JV cash call for the month of December 2016 to guarantee current and future production”.

In the downstream, a total of 1,392,154,486 litres of white products was distributed and sold by the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC) in December 2016 compared to 1,248,831,982 litres in November 2016.

According to the report, of the total volume of 12.67 billion litres of white products distributed in 2016, petrol accounted for 88.07%.

The report also revealed that about 9,493,640 barrels of crude oil were processed under the Direct-Sales-Direct-Purchase (DSDP) scheme in November, 2016.