Revenue leakages: Reps summon 5 oil firms

House of Representatives

ABUJA—House of Representatives’ Special Committee probing the revenue leakages and activities of Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, weekend, unearthed over $8 billion accrued from sales of gas warehoused by one of the oil companies operating in Nigeria.J

arigbe Agom Jarigbe (PDP, Cross River), chairman of the committee, revealed this while giving update on the ongoing investigative hearing into over N6 trillion unremitted revenues accrued from sale of gas.

Disturbed by the high level of impunity in the oil sector, the Ad-hoc Committee has summoned the management of five companies to provide evidence of payment of royalties. The companies are Sterling Global Oil Resources Ltd, Neconde Energy Ltd, ND Western Limited, Newcross E & P and Allied Energy.

Jarigbe noted that records from Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, and JP Morgan, including signature bonus, gas and crude oil royalties, concession rental, gas flaring royalties, revealed that Sterling Global Oil Resources Ltd, had no evidence of payment on gas sales and crude oil, but were yet operating in the upstream of the oil industry.

He frowned on the level of impunity being perpetuated by the oil majors and other actors in the oil industry but called for total overhaul of the Production Sharing Contract, PSC, which he described as “faulty.”

He said: “We’ve done a lot of work, we discovered that the production sharing contract as put together is very faulty and as it gives room for most of the oil companies to fleece our revenues. For instance, on the PSC that has to do with Bonga Field where we have Total Shell, Agip and other companies.

“Just in Total alone, we have revenue from gas sales in billions of dollars yet to be remitted to the Consolidated Revenue Fund. The PSC does not provide for the remittance of the proceeds from the gas sales.

“That is why we see the PSC as very faulty and when the committee went into this. Total brought a submission to us that they have a designated account and they were warehousing the monies because they are yet to reach certain terms with NNPC.”