Exactly 51 oil and gas companies owe the Federal Government N1.32 trillion, the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) stated in its 2020 report.
It said 26 of the 77 firms that owed N2.63 trillion have paid their debts.
The NEITI 2020 oil and gas industry report was unveiled in Abuja yesterday.
The report states: “The total outstanding company taxes payable to FIRS (Federal Inland Revenue Service) as of 30th September 2021 is US$79.20 million while the total amount of outstanding Federation revenue payable to the DPR (Department of Petroleum Resources) as of 31st December 2020 is US3.10billion.”
The NEITI Executive Secretary, Dr. Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, said anti-graft agencies would help recover the debts.
He said: “We have signed some MoUs to ensure that those who will want to take our report for granted will have consequences to face.
“They (anti-graft agencies) are here because the idea is immediately this report is launched, they become a document for them to use for their necessary actions.”
The report says the Federal Government spent N106 billion on petrol subsidy in 2020.
The organisation said the total subsidy claim was N133.7 billion with a balance of N26.74billion.
Orji said: “The total amount of subsidy claim by NNPC in 2020 was N133.74 billion (US$375.22 million), out of which N106.99 billion (US300.19 million) was recovered from the Federation in 2020, leaving an outstanding balance of N26.74billion to be recovered from the federation in 2021, through budgetary provision. There is, however, no report of independent validation of these figures.”
NEITI recommended that the Federal Government should fully deregulate the downstream sector.
It said savings from the stoppage of the subsidy regime should be used to improve the life of citizens.
The report urged the NNPC to “transparently disclose the details of the subsidy and the beneficiaries of the payments, in addition to rendering accounts of the loan transactions. The transaction should be extensively reviewed/investigated.”
According to the report, a “total volume of 1.799mmbbls crude oil (valued at US$59.225 million) and US2.848 mmbbls crude oil (valued at US$116.980 million) was lifted from OML 119 (Okono fields) and sold for Pre-export financing and Project Eagle agreement.
“These amounts to are for repayment of loans taken in the past to settle Marketers under the Petroleum subsidy scheme, which are being recovered from monthly federation revenue proceeds. The circumstances under which the subsidies were incurred and beneficiaries are not clear.”
NEITI said the total volume of crude losses by 22 companies was 52,056,772bbls values at about US2.21 billion, at the annual average selling price of federation equity crude oil reported in this report.
In the period under review, the report said the country lost $44.73million (N15.71billion) to crude oil and product theft.
The report noted that the Federal Government exported 107.746million barrels of crude oil valued at $6.7billion through Direct Sale Direct Purchase (DSDP).
The report noted that there was zero allocation of crude to refineries due to a lack of capacity to process crude oil.
NEITI said operatorship of OML 116 was transferred to National Petroleum Company (NPDC) whereas the proceeds from production were treated as if the ownership of the license was reassigned to NPDC.
The report, however, added that there was no consideration paid to show that it was reassigned.
In the period under review, said the report, total cash call liabilities as of December 2020 was $1.6 billion.
The agency stressed that the total cash call paid to JV operators was $3.6 billion.
It noted that the oil and gas sector contributions to export were N9.44 trillion, representing 75 per cent of total government export of N12.52 trillion.
NEITI also said oil and gas contribution to government revenue was N4.7 trillion while total revenue was N9.3 trillion.