NNPC blames NPDC’s performance on militancy in Niger Delta

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has blamed the abysmal performance of the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) in the month of January 2017 on militancy in the Niger Delta region, according to its monthly financial reports.

The NPDC year-to-date (YTD) (January to December 2016) cumulative production from all fields amounted to 17,017,458 barrels of crude oil which translated to an average daily production of 46,496 barrels.

When we compare NPDC’s performance to national production, the company production share amounted to 2.53 per cent which is very far away from the intention of establishing the upstream arm of the NNPC which is to ramp up production level to as much as 250,000 barrels per day.

According to the report, NPDC production continued to be hampered by the incessant pipeline vandalism in the Niger-Delta. The report stated that NPDC is projected to ramp-up production level to 250,000bp/d after the completion of the on-going NPDC re-kitting project and repairs of vandalized facilities.

Production from NPDC wholly operated assets amounted to 9,059,215 barrels (or 53.23 per cent of the total production) with Okono Okpoho (OML 119) alone producing 91.26 per cent of the NPDC wholly owned operated assets or 48.58 per cent of the total NPDC production. Also on the NPDC operated JV assets, in which NPDC owns 55 per cent controlling interest, crude oil production amounted to 4,537,098 barrel (or 26.66 per cent of the NPDC total production). On the non-operated assets, production level stood at 3,421,145 barrels or 20.10 per cent of the company production.

It may be recalled that the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) that it lacked the capacity to manage national oil assets allocated to it.

The transparency watchdog had berated the NPDC, declaring that the company lacked the requisite technical expertise and financial capability to manage Nigeria’s oil assets.

NEITI had in a statement on its recently released Policy Brief entitled ‘Unremitted funds, oil sector reforms and economic recovery’, also called on the Federal Government to revisit and re-evaluate the transfer of the federation oil assets by the NNPC to the NPDC.

NEITI stated that the review became imperative, in view of the under-valuation, non-payment for the assets and the inability of the NPDC to either make returns on the investments or be accountable to the federation over its management of Nigeria’s oil assets in its custody.