NEITI indicts NNPC, NPDC for non-remittance of $4.7bn, N380bn

NEITI, in its audit report for 2014 released in Abuja yesterday, also disclosed that the country lost $198.7 million in the year under review to the crude oil-for-product swap and the Offshore Processing Arrangements, OPA.

NEITI said the release of these reports is in accordance with the global Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) standards which encourage implementing countries to release their independent industry audit reports at most two years in arrears.

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, noting that the four assets were recently valued by the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, at $2.25 billion.

He further stated that there are 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, while the NPDC is still having an 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.”