NNPC Names Duke Oil, Others In Fresh OPA Deal

Determined to ensure steady supply of petro­leum products, the Nige­rian National Petroleum Corporation(NNPC), last week named Duke Oil, Carl­son and Napoil as the three new companies to engage in Offshore Processing Agree­ment (OPA).

The corporation, however, said that the deal would be a stop-gap arrangement which is designed to run for three months and obliges the cor­poration to allocate a certain volume of crude oil within the period for refining at off­shore locations in exchange for petroleum products at pre-agreed yield pattern.

Under the OPA agree­ment, NNPC allocates a total of 210, 000 barrels of crude oil per day for refin­ing at offshore locations in exchange for petroleum products at pre-agreed yield pattern.

A statement from the Group General Manag­er, Group Public Affairs, NNPC, Mr. Ohi Alegbe, ex­plained that the temporary OPA package would lapse with the advent of the fresh OPA contracts envisaged to come into effect at the end of the ongoing public tender of the process.

It noted that the OPA ar­rangement would help aug­ment in-country production of refined petroleum prod­ucts from the nation’s refin­eries to meet local demand.

Recall that the corpora­tion had three weeks ago, announced the termina­tion of OPA entered into in January, 2015, with three companies- Duke Oil Com­pany Inc., Aiteo Energy Re­sources Limited and Sahara Energy Resources Nigeria Limited.

“However after detailed appraisal of the operation and its terms of agreement, the NNPC is convinced that the current OPA is skewed in favour of the companies such that the value of prod­uct delivered is significantly lower than the equivalent crude oil allocated for the programme,’’ the corpora­tion had said.

NNPC also explained that the structure of the agree­ment does not guarantee unimpeded supply of petro­leum products as delivery terms were not optimal.

To address these lapses, the NNPC informed that it has commenced the process of establishing alternative OPA based on optimum yield pattern with tender processing fees.