NEITI demands account of $16.8bn NLNG dividends

The Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has demanded that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) gives account of the $16.8bn Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) dividends collected in the last 16 years.

This is contained in NEITI’s 2015 Oil and Gas Industry Audit Report recently report.

ALSO SEE: The $26 billion NNPC contract scam is highest corruption record in Nigeria – Onovo

The report indicated that “In 2015, the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (NLNG) paid $1.07 billion as dividend, interest and loan repayment to Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, broken down as follows: $1.04 billion as dividends, $3.1 million as interests, and $29.1 million as loan repayment.

“This brings to a total of $16.8 billion NLNG’s payments to NNPC for the period 2000 to 2015. The payments are for the loan grant to NLNG and for the 49% stake that the government holds in the company.”

The group added that although NNPC has always confirmed receipt of the payments, it had never shown evidence of remittance to neither the Federal Government or to the Federation Account.

Consequently, NEITI recommended that NNPC provides documentary evidence of the authorisation to hold the money in trust and to give details of the expenditure from and the status of the $16.8 billion collected in 16 years.

The report also disclosed how Nigeria’s oil and gas revenues declined from $54.5 billion in 2014 to $24.8 billion in 2015 and that Nigeria’s oil production capacity dropped from a total 798 million barrels in 2014 to 776 million barrels in 2015.

The report stated that total outstanding revenue from the sector as at 2015 was about $3.7 billion and N80 billion, with losses incurred at $2.2 billion and N60 billion, while reconciled revenues amounted to about N317 billion.