The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has stopped the importation of Dual Purpose Kerosene (DPK) into the country for at least three months running.

This is contained in the Apex oil firm’s recent financial and operations report.

The August 2016 edition of the report indicated that the last time that the corporation imported kerosene into Nigeria under the Direct-Sale Direct-Purchase/Offshore Processing Agreement was in May.

Further analysis of the report as issued yesterday indicated that in June, July and August this year, the NNPC did not get a single litre of DPK under the DSDP/OPA.

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, had in February, announced the replacement of the crude swap arrangement with what he called the Direct-Sale Direct-Purchase framework (DSDP), which took off in April.

The DSDP was adopted to replace the crude swap initiative and the offshore processing arrangement in a bid to entrench transparency in the crude oil for product transaction by the country’s national oil firm.

The Punch  sighted some documents at the Abuja headquarters of the NNPC, which showed that by implementing the DSDP, Nigeria was able to save $336.4m (N102.6bn at the official exchange rate of N305 to $1) between April and July 2016.

However, the latest report of the corporation showed that while the national oil firm continued the DSDP framework for the importation of Premium Motor Spirit, popularly known as petrol, it discontinued the importation of DPK through the channel.

It was not indicated in the report if the oil firm was still importing kerosene through other channels but the report averred that the corporation produced DPK from the country’s refineries.

Meanwhile, the Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, NNPC, Mr. Garba-Deen Mohammed, had stated that he would find out if the firm had stopped kerosene importation, particularly through the DSDP channel.