The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation on Sunday announced a total export sale of crude oil and gas of $490m (N150bn at the official exchange rate of N306.9 to a dollar) in February 2019, which was 32.45 per cent higher than the previous month’s sale.

Data in the just-released February 2019 edition of the corporation’s monthly financial and operations report showed that crude oil export sales contributed $350.29m (71.48 per cent) of the dollar transactions compared with $240.23m contribution in the previous month.

The report stated that the export gas sales amounted to $139.74m in the month under review, adding that the February 2018 to February 2019 crude oil and gas transactions indicated that crude oil and gas worth of $5.94bn was exported.

The report announced a 40 per cent drop in recorded cases of oil pipeline vandalism in February 2019, when compared with the reported incidents of January 2019.

A breakdown of the report indicated that in February 2019, a total of 137 pipeline points were vandalised, which translates to 40 per cent drop from the 230 points vandalised in January 2019.