NNPC: Reps probe $163bn abandoned gas assets, others

The House of Representatives, on Thursday, commenced an investigation into the status of the $163 billion gas assets belonging to Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and joint venture operators, across the country.

Hon Ademorin Kuye Chairman, Ad-hoc House Committee investigating Federal Government abandoned properties across the Federation including the Status, Use, and Current State of all Federal Government Properties in the country held in Abuja, issued a seven-day ultimatum to the Director of National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS) to provide records of all NNPC assets and other information that would aid the ongoing investigation.

Speaking earlier, Hon Isiaka Ibrahim who stressed the need for accountability of the public assets, said: “You are aware of the asset holdings by NNPC, both onshore and offshore. Of great concern to the National Assembly is that after the commissioning of most of the assets that you have with most of the IOCs; they are all greatly abandoned, constituting environmental hazards. The pipeline networks most times are not properly disposed of. That is one leg.

“The second leg is that it is estimated that $163 billion worth of joint venture operations had existed between the NNPC and most oil companies, which along the line, we don’t really know what happened until you told it openly before us as a National Assembly on how we can come to intervene through legislative means and have this resolved. We quite remember that sometimes ago, the President of Equatorial Guinea came to Nigeria to visit the President on most of these assets. They were abandoned.

“We are not interlopers. As representatives of Nigerians and the stake you are holding forth on most of your production sharing contracts, hitherto, this brought to the fore about this investigative hearing.

“The third leg is about your own assets – owned by the NNPC. We have discovered that a lot of people, either the way they are being managed…we are not blaming the assets management company or Corporation of your sector…most of the assets are littered everywhere in the country and nobody is taking ownership.

“In this wise, the committee will just want to see the list of physical assets owned by NNPC, then those you are holding forth hitherto on behalf of Nigerians under your production sharing contracts with IOCs, both onshore and offshore, and those that have been abandoned; the steps that you have taken or that you are going to take; the process and procedure and those that you have actually decommissioned.

“Offshore, we are aware that most of all the oil rigs, platforms, pipelines and others that are no longer in use by you have been left and we are aware that this can constitute environmental hazards for us.

“These are the four legs of the questions we are asking. Give us the process and the procedure and submit documents to the committee. Then, we would be able to relate with you further on those four clarifications that we want to seek.”

While responding, NNPC Group Managing Director, Mr Mele Kyari, observed that all the assets acquired by NNPC and its subsidiaries are managed by Pension Funds Limited or NNPC Properties Limited, respectively.

Mr Kyari who was represented by the Managing Director NNPC Properties Limited (NPL), Mr Musa Hamza, said: “In terms of assets, we don’t know which assets really but we are here as custodians of all the NNPC assets because the entire thing that we have is in the basket of either the Pension Funds Limited or NNPC Properties Limited. Yes, they have other assets which are in their (joint) ventures activities. So, we are here to represent the entire corporation. We have all the necessary data that may be required in terms of assets – buildings, land and other things.”

In his remarks, however, Hon. Kuye emphasised that “various complaints that we have received from communities in the South-South about wasted pipelines that are just littering all over the place particularly in Delta, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Rivers.

“And the complaints we have from these communities are to the extent that not only have they caused environmental hazards, they are constituting threats to the security of the communities because it leads to vandals coming in all of the time to check on those things that are just lying waste there.

“Some of us here are members of the downstream sector and we have visited a few of your refineries and I particularly was at the Kaduna refinery and I was talking to your head there about the staff quarters.

“We were informed that some of them are being disposed to staff. We observed largely that most of the land there has been encroached by the indigenes around that place. Our concern is that, what measures are you putting in place to protect these government assets or are we just going to lose all of them to the public, whereas the government continues to borrow money when we can actually make money from the sales of those assets. Please, help us to address the issue of your estates.”

In his response to the question on the assets in the joint venture businesses that NNPC has with other companies, the NNPC Group Managing Director said: “I think NAPIMS is the right person to get to give you those verifications. We are here controlling only the landed assets; that is, the buildings and land.

“So, I am not going to do justice in terms of telling you anything about these things. But I know a little bit, a snippet that NAPIMS is trying to take stock of all those assets but I cannot do justice really answering any question on their behalf now.

“On your question on abandoned assets nationwide, NNPC has really seen that as a problem and we have really started by trying to take stock of all the assets that exist. And on their behalf, we have taken an inventory of all of them. We have documented them. On some, we are having issues because of the titles of those assets, we have not laid our hands on them so that we can really authenticate if they are really NNPC-owned.

“Some of those that have been left for the operations, like the refineries and the depots; all those assets, we are trying to take a proper stock of them and see how we can really own them,” he noted.

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