21 November 2018, Sweetcrude, Lagos — The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has put average crude oil price for the month of July this year at $72.57 per barrel, as against $72.67 per barrel in June.
The corporation disclosed this in its Financial and Operations Report for July 2018.
Industry watchers attributed the oil price decline to the slight rise in the global inventories, saying the scenario is expected to continue into the second half of 2018.
In July, the OPEC Reference Basket, ORB, increased marginally by 0.07 percent to finish the month at $73.27 per barrel compared to the previous year’s ORB of $68.48 per barrel in the same period.
Also, the report indicated that during the period under review, NNPC recorded 204 pipeline breaks.
It also indicated that 188 pipeline points were vandalised as against 165 recorded last month, with the Ibadan-Mosimi pipeline accounting for 124 points or 66 percent of the vandalism cases, while the Aba-Enugu, Port Harcourt-Aba and other locations accounted for the rest.
A total of 1,858 vandalised points were recorded between July 2017 to July 2018, the report added.