The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) recorded a total shortfall of $1.2 billion in the financing of its priority projects between January and May 2021, latest data from the national oil company has shown.
This is coming as the Senate’s decision to award three per cent to oil-bearing communities may not be the only controversial clause in the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB). The Senate in the recently passed PIB, has also restricted the importation of all petroleum products into the country to only players that have local refining capacity.
The NNPC document showed that the entire appropriation for ‘calendarised’ cost recovery and funding for priority projects was $6.43 billion, which was further segmented into $536 million monthly. According to the corporation, of the $2.680 billion that was supposed to be released for the projects as of May this year, only $1.468 billion financing had been made available, leaving a deficit of $1.211 billion.
In terms of actual functional dollar funding level, a breakdown of the releases showed that in January, $276.4 million was spent on cost recovery and ongoing projects, in February it was $252.9 million, while it was $307.65 million in March.
Meanwhile, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Mallam Mele Kyari, in this interview on Arise News Channel, THISDAY’s broadcast arm, spoke about on topical issues, including why the national oil company is taking a 20 per cent stake in Dangote refinery. Emmanuel Addeh presents the excerpts.
Tell us why the NNPC is acquiring 20 per cent in Dangote refinery The question is: Why would we even build a refinery in the first place? First of all, there are a number of realities like transportation, power and other things that petroleum adds to nations and populations.
These are real and you can’t avoid it and of course for a resource-dependent country, we are very blessed with over 37 billion barrels reserves of crude oil and over 203TCF of gas. One key issue about oil is that it must be close to source of supply in terms of security and every resource-dependent country makes sure they add value to what they produce. That means capturing all the value upfront and getting energy security in-country.
