“We don’t know under what circumstances it (the contracts) was done as all of us are new; most of the dealings were done before our appointment.
“Before us, a lot of things happened; we met a lot of things as inconclusive, and this has led us into reconciliations which are still ongoing.
“We discovered that some contractual agreements were not favourable to PPMC, which was why we went into the reconciliations. I don’t want to jump into conclusions, but I should be clear that oil swap is practised globally,” she said.
When the committee asked if due process was followed in the selection of trading companies involved in the deals, the Petroleum Resources Ministry’s team said records at its disposal showed that the arrangement was carried out through presidential approvals.
The committee requested to see the presidential approval in question and the PPMC eventually presented one, but this was rejected by the committee on the ground that it was a wrong approval: it was an Offshore Processing Agreement (OPA) and not an oil swap agreement.
The committee was therefore informed that there was a ministerial approval for the swap arrangement in August 2010. It was also revealed that lifting of crude oil began before the contract was consummated.
The House Committee then inquired if a minister had the legal power to approve contracts of such magnitude.
It was at this point that the committee resolved to summon the former NNPC and PPMC chief executives involved in the arrangements in the past years.
Meanwhile, two former Group Managing Directors (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Austine Oniwon and Joseph Dawha alonh with the immediate past Managing Director of the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC), Haruna Momoh, have been summoned by the House of Representatives Ad-Hoc Committee probing Refined Product Exchange Agreement/Crude Oil Swap.
Oniwon, Dawha and Momoh are to appear before the panel alongside other key officers connected with the crude oil swap arrangement since 2009.
Although no date has been fixed for their appearance by the Hon. Zakari Mohammed-led committee, but their invitation followed the apparent disregard for due process in the consummation of oil swap agreements with the oil companies contracted.
The controversial oil swap agreements and offshore crude oil processing agreements were all terminated in September 2015 and to end in January 2016. The swap concept is to be replaced with Improved Offshore Processing Arrangement (IOPA).
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