2015 independent audit of oil, gas has recorded 94 percent compliance ―NEITI

THE on-going Independent Audit of the Oil and Gas Industry covering 2015 by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has recorded 94% compliance by companies and relevant government agencies with 14 companies topped the ranking table with a maximum score of 100%.

The companies, according to a statement by the Director of Communications, NEITI, Dr Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, a copy of which was made available to the Nigerian Tribune in Abuja, on Tuesday, were Chevron Nigeria Ltd, Consolidated, Continental, Eroton, Esso Exploration, Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited and Niger Delta Petroleum Resources.

Other oil companies within the 100% compliance ranking include Nigeria Gas Company, Orient Energy, Star Deepwater Petroleum and Walter smith Petroman.

Remarkably, two government agencies, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Nigeria Content Development and Monitoring Board also recorded 100% compliance in the ranking.

“Similarly, five companies namely, Shoreline, Statoil, Petrobas, Mid Western and ND Western, scored between 98% to 94% to book their respective places in the top compliance ranking category. In the same direction, twenty companies scored between 80% and 88% while twelve others recorded between 72% and 75% in an exercise industry experts have described as successful and innovative.

“The compliance ranking report further showed that only four companies representing 6%,failed to make submissions before the deadline. Of these four companies, two made submissions after the ranking deadline had elapsed and therefore scored zero ranking, while two others failed to comply at all.

“The criteria for the compliance ranking focused mainly on two major critical areas in the NEITI audit value chain. These are timeliness and completeness in submission of information and data requested by NEITI in the audit templates. While timeliness measured when the covered entities submitted the templates, the completeness considered how many of the applicable templates were submitted.

Speaking on the ranking exercise, the Executive Secretary of NEITI, Mr Waziri Adio remarked “we decided to rank companies and government agencies covered by the NEITI audit process so as to incentivize timely and complete compliance.

Adio added “given that this is the first time we are doing this, we are very impressed with the compliance rate. We commend the high fliers and call for improvement from others. We want to see a situation where all the entities score 100% possibly by next year.”

The data collection and voluntary submission of information and data in NEITI/EITI Audit process is a major step in the independent audit value chain.  NEITI wishes to state that this exercise does not represent full compliance assessment with the audit process, as the audit is not yet completed.

All entities will be further ranked in terms of their cooperation with the NEITI auditors, the accuracy of their data and level of reconciliation, among others.

The process began on 2^ndMay 2017when the audit templates were dispatched by NEITI to affected companies and relevant government agencies. This was followed by a workshop to enlighten all the companies and relevant government agencies on their roles in populating the audit templates.