It, therefore, recommended that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) should provide documentary evidence of the authorization to hold the money in trust and to give an account of the expenditure from and the status of the $16.8 billion collected in 16 years.
According to the NEITI 2015 Oil and Gas Industry Audit Report, a copy of which was obtained by Nigerian Tribune in Abuja, the total outstanding revenue from the sector as at 2015 was $3.7 billion and N80 billion, while losses incurred stood at $2.2 billion and N60 billion, and unreconciled revenues amounted to N317 billion.
The report quoted the Executive Secretary of NEITI, Waziri Adio of saying, “beyond providing a snapshot of what transpired in 2015, this report reveals money to be recovered, leakages to be blocked, and urgent reforms to be undertaken.
“The most critical take-away is the need to expedite, expand and sustain reforms in this still critical sector of national life”, the report stated.
It further showed that Nigeria suffered a 54.6% decline in oil revenues but only a slight 2.7% fall in oil production, saying this was due to drastic reduction in the unit price of crude oil in the global market.
It will be recalled that the yearly average price of crude oil per barrel tumbled from $101.91 in 2014 to $52.16 in 2015.
Oil and gas revenues have been declining since 2011 when total revenues peaked at $68.4b.
A five-year analysis in the report revealed that revenues declined by 8%, 7.7% and 6% in 2012, 2013 and 2014 respectively. However, the decline leapt to double digits in 2015 when total revenue dwindled by more than half.
Total oil production also dropped but not by much: from 798 million barrels in 2014 to 776 million barrels in 2015.
The report attributed the decline to oil theft and militancy. However, total gas production went up by 20.23% from 2, 593,090 mmscf in 2014 to 3, 250, 667 mmscf in 2015. The jump by a fifth was on account of the combined effect of increase in gas utilization and decline in gas flaring.
According to the report, the total oil lifted in 2015 was 780 million barrels, about four million barrels higher than the amount produced with the balance drawn from previous years. Of the 780 million barrels, the companies lifted 467 million barrels, while NNPC lifted 313 million barrels.
NNPC’s liftings, according to the report, were split almost evenly between Federation Export and Domestic Crude Allocation, which accounted for 159.4 million barrels and 153.9 million barrels respectively.
Only 8.7 million barrels or 5.6% of crude oil, however, allocated for domestic consumption went to the refineries in 2015 on account of the state of the refineries.
On Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (NLNG) dividends, the report said in 2015, the paid $1.07 billion as dividend, interest and loan repayment to NNPC, broken down as follows: $1.04 billion as dividends, $3.1 million as interests and $29.1 million as loan repayment.
This brought to a total of $16.8 billion NLNG’s payments to NNPC for the period of 2000 to 2015. The payments were for the loan grant to NLNG and for the 49% stake that the government holds in the company.
The report frowned that while NNPC has always confirmed receipt of the payments, it has never shown evidence of remittance to either the Federal Government or to the Federation Account.
and then