NIGERIAN National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) upstream subsidiary – the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) – is holding on to N1.76 trillion (consisting $5.5 billion and N72.4 billion), the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) alerted yesterday.
The agency urged the Federal Government to revisit and re-evaluate the transfer of some oil assets and unremitted revenues in the custody of the NPDC.
Making the call as part of the transparency agency’s continued review of the highlights of its latest edition of policy brief entitled: “Unremitted funds, oil sector reforms and economic recovery”, NEITI underlined the importance of the step.
Its Executive Secretary Waziri Adio said in Abuja that the move has become imperative considering NNPC’s under-valuation and refusal to pay for some federal assets.
According to Adio, the NPDC has been unable to either make returns on investments on the assets or be accountable to the federation over its management of the oil assets in its custody.
The NEITI Policy Brief put the total unremitted revenues to the federation at N1.76 trillion.
Details of the outstanding revenues by the NPDC to the Federation Account in respect of the transferred oil assets by the NNPC include: $1.7 billion in respect of the transfer of right oil mining leases, OMLs from the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) joint venture.
Another $2.23 billion was also outstanding in respect of the transfer of four OMLs from the Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC JV).
The NEITI report said the NPDC was yet to refund about $148.3 million and about N2.42 billion, being cash-calls paid to it by the Federal Government for the transferred OMLs.

The Nation