The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation loses between $800 million and $1 billion annually to inefficiency, mismanagement and unnecessary interference from political authorities.
This was the view of the Alex Okoh, director general of Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) who said it is better for the corporation to be reorganised or reformed now and allow it to compete with its peers across the globe
The BPE boss who spoke on ’BPE’S Role-Post PIGB Investors Benefits’ at the centre of Petroleum Information (CPI) Roundtable said that NNPC faces a range of issues that make reforms an inevitability if only is to ensure the stability and efficiency of the Nigerian Petroleum industry.
He listed a litany of other things that have bedeviled the corporation, stating that they must be dealt with before there could be a reversal of the current losses the corporation experience on an annual basis.
He went further to state that there is a weak governance structure and lack of transparency, accountability, and commercial oversight and credible management structures in place.
He said also the reluctance to relinquish political influence or surrender discretionary control over the use of National Oil Company’s (NOC) funds by State, and the deliberate attempt at avoiding clarity concerning the NOC’s organizational positioning in the government structure are major obstacles to having a profitable and a result-oriented state oil company.
“Politically constituted boards of directors, without requisite professionalism or Independence, obstructs the formation of adequately capitalized or independent enterprises, or business units within enterprises with incentives to act commercially”.
The conflict of roles by NNPC in which he formulates, implements and regulates the sector and at the same time being an active player in the sector simultaneously also does not allow the corporation to be focused, he said.
Meanwhile the NNPC claimed it has a trading surplus of N6.33 billon for the month of May 2019, a figure which is 13 percent higher than the N5.60 billion surplus posted in the preceding month of April 2019.
Details of the report contained in the May 2019 edition of the NNPC Monthly Financial and Operations Report (MFOR) attributed the modest rise to the increase in gas and power output which contrasts with the report made figure for the preceding month.
Ndu Ughamadu, group general manager, Group Public Affairs Division of the Corporation attributed the result to the surplus recorded by the corporation’s downstream entities like NNPC Retail, PPMC, NPSC and Duke Oil.
The report further indicated that within the period, the NNPC recorded a total of $580.32 million in export sale of crude oil and gas which is 23.39 percent higher than the previous month’s figure. Out of this number, crude oil export sales contributed $458.59 million which translates to 79.02 percent of the entire dollar transactions compared with $342.11 million contributed in the previous month.
The report also showed that between May 2018 and May 2019, crude oil and gas worth $5.97 billion was exported.
In the downstream, to ensure uninterrupted supply and effective distribution of petrol across the country, a total of 2.06bn litres of petrol translating to 66.49mn liters/day were supplied for the month of May 2019.
It was noted that beyond supply, the corporation continued to diligently monitor the daily stock of petrol to achieve smooth distribution of petroleum products and zero fuel queue across the nation.
Within the period, a total of 60 pipeline points were vandalized which represents a remarkable 52 percent decrease from the 125 points vandalized in April 2019.
Olusola Bello
