No ghost company involved in crude lifting – NNPC
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) yesterday said all the companies given approval to lift 2017/2018 crude oil term contracts are duly registered and not ghost companies.
In a letter reacting to a news story with caption: Ghost companies lift N1.1 trillion crude oil published on December 17 edition of The Daily Trust Sunday, the NNPC Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, NDU UGHAMADU gave full names and registration number of the affected companies as follows; AMG Petroenergy Limited-191430; Brittania-U Nigeria Ltd-28448; Cassiva Ltd-1091598; Hyde Energy Ltd-1051332; Masters Energy Oil& Gas Ltd-616872; Bono Energy Ltd¬-609822 and Sahara Energy Resources Ltd318527.
NNPC also debunked that the affected companies collectively lifted a total of about 67.2Million Barrels of Nigerian Crude oil valued at about $3.5 billion between January-October 2017 from NNPC.
But the group General Manager said based on their records a total of 8.8 Million Barrels of crude oil valued at $436.35 Million as at 30th October 2017 was lifted contrary to the 67.2Million Barrels claimed.
“The above clarifications demonstrate that the allegations by the Daily Trust are not only baseless but intended to mislead the public while disparaging the Corporation. The corporation wishes to place on record that all crude oil lifting transactions are backed by irrevocable letters of credit issued by investment grade banks and therefore all payments are pre-secured.” The statement added.
Following the publication of the list of the winners of the 2017/2018 crude term contract companies on its (NNPC) website (http://nnpcgroup. com/ PublicRelations/ NNPCinthenews/ tabid/92/ articleType/ ArticleView/ articleId/699/ NNPCAnnounces-Winners-of20172018-Crude-TermContract. aspx) on January 3, 2017, our reporter commissioned an investigation due to the suspicion that some of the names were not completely written. To ascertain the integrity of the companies listed, we wrote to the Corporate Affairs Commission on July 5, 2017 requesting for the legal status of the companies involved. The CAC in their reply on August 4, with ref: RGO/SU/ VOL.4/2017.0448 confirmed 11 out of the 18 companies sent to them and said based on their records there was no evidence of the registration of the following companies; AGM petroenergy limited, Brittania-U, Cassiva Energy Limited, Hyde Energy, Masters Energy Bono Energy Nigeria Limited and Savana Energy.
The CAC in their letter said “if you have any document to support their registration you may wish to forward them to us to enable us investigate further”.
We therefore wrote on August 9, 2017 to the Group Managing Director NNPC, for the full names of companies currently holding the 2017/2018 crude oil term contract and daily crude oil volume entitlements for each company. However our request was not treated by the NNPC despite several reminders.
On November 7, our reporter also reminded the Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, NNPC, Mr. NDU UGHAMADU about questions contained on the letter earlier sent but he replied that ‘Dan, in Lagos’. He followed up with a phone call to Mr. Ughamadu on November 9.
Although we are aware that these affected companies have been operating in the industry for quite some times with those trade names, however without the confirmation of the exact registered names from the NNPC we couldn’t do anything otherwise but to conclude our report using exactly what we officially obtained from the NNPC website and the position by CAC that such companies do not exist in their database.
On the total amount lifted, our reporter used the figure contained in the NNPC announcement letter which stated that “All the contracts are for 32,000 barrels per day except Duke Oil Ltd, an oil trading arm of the NNPC, which shall be for 90,000 barrels per day.”
Although we are quite aware the companies do not eventually lift up to the volume as stated, since the NNPC did not provide information about the daily lifting as requested through the FOI and verbal reminders, we were constrained to arrive at the $3.5bn (N1.1tr) figure after multiplying the daily 32,000 barrels lifting by the seven companies for a period of 10 months at an oil price of $52.49.