The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has cancelled bidding for new crude oil swap agreements and plans to directly sell crude oil to refiners as well as purchase refined oil products from them.

NNPC had initially short-listed 44 companies for the swap agreements (OPAs), intended for 2016, but said most of them did not directly operate refineries.

“Getting oil products from such companies would constitute a significant value loss" for the country. Only bona fide owners of refineries identified in the ongoing OPA tender evaluation process will be further engaged,” NNPC said.

Nigeria relies on imported gasoline, kerosene and other petroleum products. In addition to the swap arrangement, it also depends on an import subsidy scheme which is fraud-ridden and expensive.

However, efforts to restore its long abandoned refineries this year have been in vain. As a result, NNPC is presently depending on interim swap agreements made in September after it cancelled the original 2015 deals.

The current swap agreement partners are, NNPC’s trading subsidiary Duke Oil, Calson NNPC’s joint-ventureand Napoil. Other companies that also put in bids for OPA agreements and have direct links to refineries include Litasco, Eni, Cepsa,Totsa, Essar, Saras and Eneos, Reuters reports.