NNPC’s export receipts decline by 67 percent to $607.8m                

Oil and gas export receipts at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) have witnessed a sharp decline of more than 67 percent from September 2014, when the receipts hit their peak, to July 2015, resulting in a relatively paltry remittance of $607.8 million to the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) in the year 2015.

This is a direct consequence of the continued decline in oil prices, which led to insufficient cash available to meet NNPC’s monthly Joint Venture (JV) Cash Call obligations worth $615.8m as appropriated by the National Assembly.

To mitigate this effect, the Corporation was compelled to sweep all export receipts to JV Cash Call funding, implying a zero dollar proceed remittance to the federation’s account since April 2015, hence its paltry receipts into the account within the period under review.

A further breakdown indicates that the total export crude oil & gas receipts for the period of January to August 2015 is $3.420billion, out of which $0.61billion was remitted to the federation’s account as dollar proceeds, while the balance of $2.815 billion was used to fund JV Cash Calls for the same period.

The sum of N723.82 billion for domestic crude oil and gas sale proceeds has also been paid by NNPC to the federation’s account from January to August 2015 as naira proceeds.

This is according to data released at the weekend by NNPC as part of its monthly obligation to ensure transparency and public accountability in its financial dealings under the leadership of Ibe Kachikwu, its current group managing director (GMD).

In line with its earlier pledge to open up its books for public scrutiny, the management of the government oil company at the weekend commenced the monthly publication of its provisional financial and operational reports.

The report provides an overview of NNPC’s operations across the oil and gas value chain, spanning through the upstream, midstream, and downstream sectors from the period of January to August 2015.

It also provides detailed and unprecedented statistical insights into crucial aspects of the Corporation’s activities, comprising of national crude oil and natural gas production, lifting and utilization, refineries plants operations, petroleum products supply and distribution, NNPC budget performance report, as well as federation crude oil & gas revenue.

The report, intended as a monthly routine, is expected to throw light into various aspects of NNPC’s operations that were once described as ‘opaque,’ implying issues such as the status of the once misunderstand JP Morgan Foreign account, and the management and custody of revenue from crude oil sales.

Others are the actual production capacity of the nation’s refineries, dollar accruals to NNPC/the federal government from export crude oil and gas, as well as associated receipts and payments.