NNPC: Report Alleging Undocumented Export of 17.8 Million Barrels of Crude Untrue

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) has said that reports that it exported 17.877 million barrels of crude oil without documentation within a period of four years was untrue.

In a statement yesterday, released by the Chief Corporate Communications Officer, NNPC , Garba Muhammad, the national oil company stated that all the monies in question were remitted to the federation account.
Several online reports had indicated that the Office of Nigeria’s Auditor General had accused the NNPC of exporting the products valued at $1,020,969,281.12 between 2016 and 2020.

The AuGF was also said to have faulted the NNPC for appointing two pre-shipment agents  and one monitoring and evaluation agent in 2017 knowing full well that President Muhammadu Buhari had cancelled the appointments of all service providers two years earlier.

They quoted that AuGF as noting that the payments were without budgetary provision and violated Section 80(4) of the 1999 Constitution.
But the NNPC rebuttal urged the public to treat the report with a pinch of salt, stating that there was no truth therein.
“Our attention has been drawn to an online publication, alleging that NNPC Limited  exported 17.877 million barrels of crude oil without proper documentation in four years (2016 to 2020).

“The Auditor General’s report in reference did mention 32 oil marketing companies involved in the non-completion of the Nigeria Exports Proceeds (NXP) forms; but that does not in any way mean that the proceeds from the sale of the said crude were not repatriated into the coffers of NNPC and consequently into federation accounts for federation related barrels,” it said.

In addition, it urged the public to note that NNPC does not appoint inspection agents as alleged, insisting that rather, it is the sole responsibility of the federal ministry of finance.

“Therefore, the general public is advised to disregard the said malicious publication, and instead visit the relevant Auditor General’s website to see the full content of the audit report, and be guided accordingly,” it noted.

Meanwhile, the  Chief Executive of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) Gbenga Komolafe, has met with executives of the Oil Producers Trade Section (OPTS) and the Independent Petroleum Producers Group (IPPG) at in Abuja.

A note from the NUPRC stated that the Chairman of the OPTS , Rick Kennedy and his IPPG counterpart  Abdulrazak Isa participated in the meeting.
The meeting which was at the instance of Komolafe,  it said, was to review progress on a number of upstream related activities since the last engagement with the commission in the last quarter of 2022. Also in attendance, it noted, were NUPRC board members and top executives of OPTS and IPPG.