BEVERLY HILLS, January 03, (THEWILL) – The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has revealed that the country lost $198.7 million in 2014 to the crude oil-for-product swap deal and the Offshore Processing Arrangements, OPA.
According to its Audit Report for 2014, NEITI said the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and its subsidiary, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) failed to remit $4.7 billion and N318.2 billion to the Federation Account in 2014.
The report further stated that at the close of the 2014 audits, NPDC had not paid the outstanding $1.7 billion for the eight Oil Mining Leases, OML, under the Shell Joint Venture (JV) divested to it by NNPC adding that the NPDC had also not paid for the four OMLs under the NAOC JV divested to it by NNPC.
Signed by the acting Executive Secretary, Waziri Adio, NEITI said the release of the reports was in accordance with the global Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) standards which encouraged implementing countries to release their independent industry audit reports at most two years in arrears.
“The value of crude oil allocated to NNPC for domestic use in 2014 came to $15.67 billion or N2.44 trillion,” the report stated.
“Only N1.36 trillion was received in the year 2014 in respect of domestic crude oil; while the total deduction from domestic crude sales was N830 billion.
“This therefore leaves an unremitted balance of N250 billion from the domestic crude sales.
“NLNG paid $1.42 billion to NNPC as dividends, loan and interest repayments for 2014 but the amount could not be traced to the Federation Account.
“Between 2005 and 2013, there was an outstanding of $12.92 billion of dividends, interest and loan repayment made by NLNG to NNPC but not remitted to the Federation Account.
“The 2014 audit uncovered evidence of $1.5 billion paid by NLNG to NNPC between 2000 and 2004 but also not remitted.
“This brings the sum of unremitted NLNG dividends, interest and loan repayment to $15.8 billion as at the end of 2014.”
“Nigeria earned $55.5 billion from the oil and gas sector in 2014, dropping by five per cent from $58.07 billion recorded in 2013, while earnings from the solid minerals sector in 2014 stood at N55.82 billion, rising by 48 per cent from N37.676 billion recorded in 2013.
“N1.2trillion was processed as subsidy claims in 2014 as against the N1.3 trillion processed for subsidy in 2013 and N426.6 billion was distributed in 2014 under the Subsidy Re-investment Programme (SURE-P), same as the SURE-P figure for 2013.”
Story by Oputah David
