NNPC: scrutiny leading to increased openness  

Due to increased scrutiny from Nigerians, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has begun to regularly publish data on the oil and gas sector of the economy and on issues affecting the corporation.

In recent times the NNPC has been using social media (Twitter page), and through publications like ‘Energy Brief’ to issue press release and send out information on the oil and gas sector of the economy.

Charles Okaformbah, a social media manager at Sisco Media and consultant for Lonadek Nig Limited commended the use of infographics on NNPC social media page as it helps a layman to understand the jargon.

“The NNPC’s social media pages are consistent in trying to engage the followers and keeping the public informed about the oil and gas industry.”

NNPC began using the social media pages to issue press releases and links to the organisation’s publications.

In December the Corporation began publication of their Monthly ‘Energy Brief’, a four-page document that provides snapshots on key developments in the oil and gas sector. In the December edition of the publication for instance, it revealed that 1.4 billion litres of petrol was made available to the market by 1267 trucks in November 2015.

The publication focuses on trends in the global oil market supported with statistical graphs. It highlights the organisation’s key achievements, challenges, and business intervention programmes.

It is also noteworthy that the publication includes information on payments into the Federal Allocation Accounts Committee. For the month of December, its January edition indicated that payments into the FAAC accounts was to the tune of N1,002,731,019,307.

NNPC has also been leveraging the power of social media to engage in mass communication. The organisation is especially active regularly updates its Twitter page with key information on its activities. It currently has 13,062 followers at the time of this publication though the trend indicates that the organisation started taking the medium seriously only a few months ago which is why it has sent out less than 500 Twitter messages.

NNPC also publishes releases directly on Twitter to make it easily assessable to everyone.

The organisation has been publishing a daily summary of PMS stock and distribution status. The chart released in its report of January 24, indicated that the country is estimated to have PMS sufficiency till February 18, 2016.

This estimate is based on the value of 662.92 million litres sent across the country through the land and 377.37 million litres of fuel discharged through marine across the country as at January 23, 2016.

 ISAAC ANYAOGU