Category: West Africa

The nation’s crude oil exploration and production activities may have hit a record low, going by the latest report from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Specifically, only Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) and Addax carried out exploration/drilling activities during the month of March, according to available data from NNPC’s monthly report obtained by The Guardian yesterday. The country has been recording low production activities since November last year, as several oil and gas firms began scaling down production due to the uncertainties surrounding the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) and the declining crude oil prices. Many oil and gas firms have also been recording losses, which made them to resort to cancelling or deferring projects. According to OPEC in its monthly oil market report, among member countries, Nigeria recorded the second sharpest drop in rig counts in March with production of 1.69mbpd in the month compare to the 2.21mbpd […]

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Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images As oil minister during military rule in the 1970s, Muhammadu Buhari oversaw the birth of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. Now, as democratically elected president, he intends to break up the opaque bureaucracy, which manages the oil assets of Africa’s biggest crude producer, to ensure taxpayers get their fair share. History isn’t on his side. “No Nigerian leader, including Buhari himself from the 1980s, has managed to sanitize the oil sector,” said Philippe de Pontet, head of the Africa practice at the Eurasia Group in New York. “Buhari’s challenge is not only to depoliticize NNPC but to disentangle its vested interests and its rogue commercial operations, which won’t be easy.” For all its importance to Nigeria, the NNPC is largely inscrutable Buhari made cleaning up the 24,000-employee colossus — the largest government-owned company — a key plank in the election campaign […]

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Nigeria must urgently reform the way it sells oil to prevent Africa’s biggest crude producer losing billions of dollars of revenue, according to a new report. The approach of the national oil company, Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., “suffers from high corruption risks and fails to maximize returns for the nation,” the New York-based National Resource Governance Institute said in a 73-page report published on Tuesday. The NNPC should end the practice of allocating about 445,000 barrels of oil a day to Nigeria’s four domestic refineries, which process less than a quarter of that total. The allocation has become the “main nexus of waste and revenue loss from NNPC oil sales,” according to the report. Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari said last month the U.S. will help trace and recover funds from the sale of about 250,000 barrels of oil that are stolen each day in the country. The oil industry, […]

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Nigerian would have been buoyant enough to finance its 2015 budget of N4.36 trillion and still pay off its external debts of N2.03 trillion if it had not lost more than that amount — $32 billion (N6.4 trillion at N200/$1) — to massive corruption that characterized oil sales by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation during the last administration, a new report has said. An independent investigative analysis by the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) has revealed that over $32 billion oil revenue was lost to NNPC’s mismanagement of Domestic Crude Allocation (DCA), opaque revenue retention practices and corruption-ridden oil-for-product swap agreements. The report offered a deep, independent analysis of how NNPC sells its oil, and found that the national oil company’s discretionary spending from domestic crude oil sale revenues has skyrocketed, exceeding $6 billion a year for the 2011 to 2013 period (i.e. over $18 billion in three years). […]

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Ughelli — The two suspects arrested by security agents in connection with the explosion that rocked an oil pipeline belonging to the Nigeria Petroleum Development Company, NPDC at Ighwrenene community, Ughelli North Local Government Area of Delta State, have stated that they blew up the pipeline in a bid to coax NPDC into awarding them a pipeline surveillance contract. The suspects identified as Dennis Oneya aka ‘General Touch’ and Emmanuel Joseph aka Ajegunle, both of Uduere and Afiesere communities respectively, told newsmen at the 222 Battalion headquarters, Agbarha-Otor that they embarked on the mission having being promised job slots by their sponsors when awarded the contract. Speaking on their modus operandi, while Dennis Oneya admitted digging the spot on the pipeline to be bombed in company of others, Emmanuel Joseph described himself as an expert in handling of dynamites used in the explosion as well as other similar blasts. […]

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Rampant stealing of petrol, mostly from along the pipes conveying it, costs Nigeria huge losses in financial terms and in impact on the environment Okon Mbom (not his real name) wakes up 4.00am every morning from his house in Ibuluya, Okrika local government area of Rivers State with one thing in mind: nothing and no one will come between him and his take-home package every sunset when he is relieved. Okon receives N10,000 every day from stern looking operatives of an oil pipeline in the deep forest. Okon of course had discovered with time that his paymasters were not government officials. Sometime last year when he was engaged, he was given strict instructions to shoot any stranger at sight. Okon had known that what he was protecting was crude oil, Nigeria’s cash cow, used to be pumped by the same pipes to various oil refineries before now but which, […]

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Asaba — Delta State Governor Ifeanyi Okowa has appealed to communities to be vigilant against pipeline vandalism which he said led to loss of three million barrels of crude oil in the state recently. Addressing a delegation of Ukoko R’Ivie R’Urhobo, the umbrella body of traditional rulers from Delta-Central Senatorial District, said in April, 2015, the state lost three million barrels of crude oil as a result of attacks on oil pipelines. "I want to say to Deltans that we should be more vigilant against pipeline vandals. They are doing us a lot of disservice, because based on the indices that have been sent to us, we are losing a lot and it will reflect in this July allocation that will be sent to us", he said. The governor added that the amendment bill for the Delta State Oil Producing Area Development Commission (DESOPADEC) which has passed through second […]

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Presidents Obama and Buhari with aides following Oval Office meeting. Whichever documents we are able to get and subsequently trace the sale of the crude or transfer of money from ministries, departments, Central Bank, we will ask the cooperation of those countries to return those monies to federation accounts and we will use those documents to arrest those people and prosecute them. This, I promise Nigerians He said his administration will recover the mind-boggling funds stashed in foreign bank accounts. The President, who made the vow during his meeting with members of Nigerians In Diaspora Organization, NIDO, resident in the United States and Canada at the Nigerian Embassy in Washington DC, also expressed difficulty in identifying genuine Boko Haram leaders with whom to negotiate for the release of Chibok girls, disclosing that the sect was plotting to exchange some of their leaders being held by the government with the […]

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