The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, said the country lost $198.7 million in 2014 to the crude oil-for-product swap and the Offshore Processing Arrangements, OPA. NEITI disclosed this in its Audit Report for 2014 released in Abuja on Friday.
It said the release of the reports was in accordance with the global Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) standards which encouragedd implementing countries to release their independent industry audit reports at most two years in arrears.
According to the report, 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.
Highlighting key aspects of the Acting Executive Secretary of NEITI, Mr. Waziri Adio, 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.
He also stated that the NPDC had also not paid for the four OMLs under the NAOC JV divested to it by NNPC. He noted that the four assets were recently valued by the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, at $2.25 billion.
Adio said that there were outstanding liabilities of N68.28 billion from the NPDC for Withholding Tax, Pay As You Earn, Education Development Tax, Value Added Tax and NDDC Tax.
According to him, the NPDC is still having outstanding liabilities of $3.3 billion for Royalty Oil, Royalty Gas, Petroleum Profit Tax, PPT, and Gas Flare Penalty.
He also accused the NNPC of failing to remit N250 billion to the Federation Account from its domestic sales of crude oil allocated to it. He said, “The value of crude oil allocated to NNPC for domestic use in 2014 came to $15.67 billion or N2.44 trillion.
” 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.” he said. He further stated that the NNPC received $1.42 billion from the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas, NLNG, as dividends, loan and interest repayments for 2014 but failed to remit same to the Federation.
This, he said brought the total NLNG payments not remitted by the NNPC between 2000 and 2014 to $15.8 billion. He said, “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.” he said.
The NEITI boss said that 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.
He explained that 41 oil and gas companies and 16 government agencies were audited for the 2014 Oil and Gas Audit cycle. He said that those audited were the producing companies that made material payments of $5 million and above to the federation in 2014 and the government agencies that received funds on behalf of the federation.
Adio further explained that 109 producing assets were active in the year, comprising 59 Joint Venture (JV) licenses; 26 Sole Risk and Marginal Field Operating (SRMF) licenses; 23 Production Sharing Contract (PSC) licenses; and one Service Contract (SC) license.
The report also revealed that 22 billion litres of petroleum products were imported as against the 20 billion litres imported in 2013, with 950 million litres of the products locally produced in 2014 as against the 2.6 billion litres locally produced 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.”
Source: NAN
