House C’ttee Hands Shell, Others One Week Ultimatum to Show Gas Flaring Penalties

James Emejo

The House of Representatives Adhoc Committee investigating revenue leakages in the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) yesterday issued a one-week ultimatum to multinational oil firms including Shell and other International Oil Companies (IOCs) to submit documents covering gas flaring penalties.

Other IOCs affected are ExxonMobil, Agip Oil, Chevron and Total.

The committee, headed by Hon. Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe (PDP, C/River) said last week that based on its findings, the sum of N6 trillion had so far been lost to revenue leakages between 2016 and 2017.

Also requested are royalties on natural gas liquid, signature bonus and bid round fees.

The committee said the loss was largely due to DPR’s inability to exert itself as a regulatory body in the petroleum industry, which provided a leeway for IOCs to meet their financial obligations. Investigations revealed that IOCs are supposed to pay $3.5 on every 1000 SCF of gas flared. However, it was gathered that most of them do not meet up such obligations.

Jarigbe said: “Let them (IOCs) know that we’re giving them one week to provide the details on those revenue items. We will send them letter and they should respond within one week.”

The committee had also sent out letters to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Duke Oil, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), the minister of state for petroleum resources, Ibe Kachikwu and the Nigeria Products Marketing Company (NPMC). Only NPMC had responded.

The committee, therefore, gave those that were yet to respond one week or lawmakers would be left with no option than to invoke their powers under relevant sections of the constitution to compel the bodies to respond.