SAN FRANCISCO, March 24, (THEWILL) – The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Friday said it has reached settlement agreements with indigenous oil companies, Taleveras Group, Aiteo Energy Resource Limited and Ontario Oil and Gas over unsupplied petroleum products topping $184 million under its crude for product swap arrangement.
According to Dr. Maikanti Baru, the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Taleveras will make an initial settlement payment of $17 million before further payments in $10 million tranches.
He said Aiteo has also proposed a repayment plan, saying that Ontario’s repayment plan is being awaited.
While commending the companies for reconciling their accounts and agreeing on a settlement plan to close the matter, Dr Maikanti said that the agreement was a product of “ongoing extensive reconciliation process” with the affected companies.
NNPC’s spokesman, Ndu Ughamadu, in a statement quoted Baru as saying: “We have engaged them and positively too. So far, AITEO has been very cooperative and we had extensive reconciliation across all our chains of businesses where they are involved.
“In the case of Televaras, they have agreed to make tranche payment of $10 million while Ontario has also agreed to come to the table with our team and present their repayment schedule.”
Baru said the recovery process is geared towards ensuring probity and accountability in the operations of the corporation in line with current reforms in the industry.
He also said NNPC was determined to recover the outstanding stock of its missing petrol in Capital oil depot.
NNPC announced last week plans to achieve full recovery of over 130 million litres of petrol stored in the facilities of two indigenous downstream operators, MRS Limited and Capital Oil & Gas Limited, under a throughput arrangement.
The oil giant said MRS has returned 30 million liters of fuel it diverted without authorization while Capital Oil & Gas still owes 82 million litres of petrol, valued at N11 billion.
