Kachikwu, NNPC boss
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, says it is determined to sustain the prevailing unimpeded nationwide supply and distribution of petroleum products nationwide and to achieve that objective it has signed an interim Offshore Processing Agreement (OPA) with three of its joint venture companies.

In a statement  made available to journalists  on Wednesday in Abuja,  Mr Ohi Alegbe, NNPC’s Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division states that the three companies that signed the agreement were Duke, Carlson and Napoil oil companies.

According to the statement, the agreement with the companies was designed to boost the supply of refined petroleum products across the country.

It said that the `stop-gap OPA’ arrangement, designed to run for three months, obliges the corporation to allocate a certain volume of crude oil within the period for refining at offshore locations.

The statement said that the temporary OPA agreement would lapse with the advent of a fresh OPA contracts being envisaged which would take effect at the end of the ongoing public tender 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.