Kachikwu tees-off new era of transparency in NNPC …Commences monthly publication of financial and operational report

In line with its earlier pledge to open up the books of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC for public scrutiny, the Management of the national oil Corporation under the leadership of Dr. Ibe Kachikwu over the weekend commenced the monthly publication of its provisional financial and operational reports.

A statement by Ohi Alegbe, Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division of NNPC, the publication which is available on the Corporation’s official website provides an overview of NNPC’s operations across the oil and gas value chain (Upstream, Midstream & Downstream) as well as NNPC’s agency function on behalf of the Government of the Federation from the period January to August 2015.

Specifically, the report provides detailed and unprecedented statistical insight into crucial aspects of the Corporation’s activities ranging from National Crude Oil & Natural Gas Production, Lifting and Utilization; Refineries Plants Operations; and Petroleum Product Supply & Distribution to NNPC Budget Performance Report and Federation Crude Oil & Gas Revenue.

Illustrated with tables, graphs and charts, the report vividly throws light into aspects of NNPC’s operations that were once described as‘opaque’. Issues like the status of the once misunderstand JP Morgan Foreign account, management and custody of revenue from crude oil sales, actual production capacity of the refineries, dollar accruals to NNPC/FGN from export crude oil and gas, as well as receipts and payments are laid bare.

The report indicates that a total of $607.8 million has been paid so far to the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee, FAAC in the year 2015 from sales of export Oil and Gas as dollar proceeds.

A further breakdown indicates that the total export crude Oil and Gas receipt for the period of January – August 2015 is $3.420 billion. Of the total receipts, the sum of $0.61 billion was remitted to Federation Account as dollar proceeds while the balance of $2.815billion was used to fund the JV Cash Call for the period.

The report notes that the receipts witnessed a sharp decline of more than 67 per cent from September, 2014, when the receipt was at its peak, to July, 2015 with dire consequences to the Federation.

The NNPC informed that the continued decline in oil price led to insufficient cash available to meet monthly JV Cash Calls obligations of about $615.8m as appropriated by the National Assembly. To mitigate this effect, NNPC was compelled to sweep all the export receipt to JV Cash Call funding implying a zero dollar proceed remittance to the Federation Account since the month of April 2015.

The sum of N723.82 billion for Domestic Crude Oil and Gas Sales proceeds has been paid to the Federation Account from January to August 2015 as Naira proceeds.