The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari has said he is hopeful that the state behemoth will be able to declare dividend this year.
Speaking at this year’s Nigeria International Petroleum Summit (NIPS), Kyari explained how the company is leveraging technology to achieve more efficiency which is helping the corporation reduce its high cost of operations and deliver more value to stakeholders.
“This company which belongs to all of us will be able to deliver dividends this year, and I believe we will achieve this,” Kyari said at the event.
He added, “We have moved our losses from over N800 billion in 2019 down to less than N3 billion in 2020.”
He noted that the corporation is doing more in terms of cutting costs, becoming more efficient and investing in assets that give value.
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In April, the NNPC had written Ahmed Idris, accountant-general of the federation, informing him that the corporation would not make any remittance to the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) in May.
In a copy of the letter seen by BusinessDay, the corporation said N111.96 billion would be deducted from April 2021 oil and gas proceeds — due to the FAAC in May — noting that the deduction was necessary to ensure the continuous supply of petroleum products to the nation and guarantee energy security.
The NNPC, in reaction, said the zero-revenue projection for May did not mean it was in bad financial straits as it pertains only to the federation revenue stream it manages.
At the Monday’s event in Abuja, Kyari admitted that one of the major challenges facing Nigeria’s decade of gas’s dream is because “most companies consciously explored for crude oil and not gas due to production sharing contracts (PSC) on most assets.”
Concerning update on Train 7, “We would do physical kick-off of Train 7 on 15 of June 2021.”
Kyari said the corporation is fully aware of the emerging changes around the world and is also considering if its present name represents the true reality or image of the company.
He boasted that no state-owned company is as transparent as NNPC both in terms of accountability and in giving stakeholders up to date information about the corporation’s activities.
“We are about rounding up our NNPC’s audited 2020 reports,” Kyari said.
