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Senate Committee Demands Audited Accounts Of NNPC, Others

January 20, 2016

The Senate Committee on Gas Resources Wednesday asked the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC) and its subsidiaries to submit all their detailed audited accounts in the past three years.

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The committee also blamed Federal Government agencies for the worsening gas flaring in the country.

The committee noted that inability of relevant enforce payment of stipulated penalties on erring International Oil Companies, OICs, was mainly responsible for increased gas flaring.

Apart from the NNPC, others mandated to submit their audited accounts are the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, NPDC, Nigerian Petroleum Investment and Management Service, NAPIMS, Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas, NLNG.

Chairman of the committee, Senator Albert Akpan, gave the directive during the committee’s engagement with the agencies in Abuja.

Akpan said the directive was in line with the mandate of the committee in its ongoing investigation into the activities of the agencies.

He said that details of the accounts must be submitted as soon as possible to enable his committee meet its deadline given by the Senate.

The audited account, he said, would afford the committee the opportunity to know the joint venture funding and cost determination of the oil companies and government agencies.

He said, “From the audited account, we will know also who approves projects and how are the projects monitored and the mechanism for cost recovery and monitoring of the projects.”

Akpan also asked the agencies to present the data of the quality of gas flared by the oil companies in the past two years.

He said, “Give us the submission of the gas that you have flared and each of your operators involved. The quality of gas flared, the operators, the terminal and the related penalties paid.”

The panel chairman frowned at the 2016 budget of the Department of Petroleum Resources, saying that N3 billion only earmarked by the agency on penalties for gas flaring, was grossly inadequate.

Group General Manager, NAPIMS /NNPC, Dafe Sajebor and the Managing Director of National Petroleum Development Corporation, Sadler Mai-Bornu, assured that the organizations were working assiduously to end gas flaring in the country between 2018 and 2020.

“The percentage of gas flared in the country is of average, seven percent and we are still working on a number of projects to flare out; we are targeting 2018 for us to have a total flare out.

“Those evolutions have  been translated and proposed for better fiscal regime in the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, and that is why we are praying and hoping that the PIB should be passed so that Nigerians can derive better benefits from the oil and gas investment, ” the NAPIMS boss said.