A team headed by the
former Chairman, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu,
produced the 146-page study based on the Ministry of Petroleum Resources’
request. It covers the year 2002 to 2012.
The report said that
Ministers of
Petroleum Resources between 2008 and 2011 handed out seven
discretionary oil licences, but that $183m in signature bonuses was missing
from the deals.
Three of the oil
licences were awarded since the current minister, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke,
took up her position in 2010, according to the report.
“I have not given
any discretionary awards during this administration,” Alison-Madueke told
Reuters, although she added that the President had the right to do so instead
of using bids if he saw fit.
“That is entirely up
to him,” she said.
Alison-Madueke, told
Reuters on Tuesday that she received the report last month but that it was a
draft and the government was still supposed to give input.
The one seen by
Reuters was labelled “Final Report.”
The report concluded
that oil majors, Shell, Total and Eni, made bumper profits from cut-price gas,
while oil ministers handed out licences at their own discretion. This, while
not illegal, did not follow best practice of using open bids.
Hundreds of millions
of dollars in signature bonuses on those deals were also missing, it said.
“We have not seen
this report and are, therefore, unable to comment on the content, but we will
study it if and when it is published,” a Shell spokesman said.
The report alleges
international oil traders sometimes buy crude without any formal contracts, and
the state oil firm, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, had
short-changed the Nigerian treasury billions over the last 10 years by selling
crude oil and gas to itself below market rates.
There was no
suggestion that the oil majors or traders had done anything illegal, but the
report highlighted a lack of transparency in their dealings in a nation rife
with graft.
“It is a draft,”
Alison-Madueke said. “There will be some areas where the government … may have
a slightly different opinion … (and) will put its point of view to the
committee.”
She said she
expected the final report to be with President Goodluck Jonathan within two
weeks.
Ribadu’s probe was
among several set up following a week of nationwide strikes against a rise in
fuel prices in January, which morphed into a campaign against oil corruption.
Billions of dollars
of revenue was missing in unpaid debts from signature bonuses and royalties,
the report found.
Nigeria LNG, a
company jointly owned by the NNPC, Shell, Total and Eni, had paid the country
for gas at cut-down prices before exporting it to international markets, the
report said.
Total and Eni
declined to comment because they invest in but do not operate Nigeria LNG, the
role played by Shell.
“The estimated
cumulative of the deficit between value obtainable on the international market
and what is currently being obtained from NLNG, over the 10-year period,
amounts to approximately $29bn,” the report said.
It also said foreign
oil firms had outstanding debts.
Addax, now a unit of
China’s state-owned Sinopec, owes Nigeria $1.5bn in unpaid royalties, part of a
$3bn black hole of unpaid bonuses and royalties owed by oil firms.
Addax did not
respond to requests for comment, but the report noted it disputed owing the
signature bonuses.
Shell owes the
Federal Government N137.57bn for gas sold from its Bonga deep offshore field,
the report said, while oil majors owed $58m between them for gas flaring
penalties. They were also not adhering to newer higher fines.
The probe also said
Nigeria was the only nation to sell all its crude through international oil
traders rather than directly to refineries, adding that such trades were often
opaque.
It said some
international oil traders who were not “on the approved master list of
customers” had been sold crude oil “without a formal contract” so little could
be obtained about the details of these deals, which could be worth hundreds of
millions of dollars.
“This logically will
serve to reduce margins obtainable on sale of crude oil,” the report said.
But Alison-Madueke
disputed this, saying there were no informal contracts and there was “an
official tender put out every year,” which could be seen by the public in
newspapers.
The state oil firm
gets an allocation of 445,000 barrels per day of crude oil to refine locally,
but it has been selling itself this oil at cut-down prices, a practice which
cost Nigeria $5bn in potential revenue between 2002 and 2011, the report said.
“NNPC buys at
international rates,” Alison-Madueke retorted.
The report said the
NNPC made N86.6bn over the 10-year period by using overly generous exchange
rates in its declarations to the government. There was no sign of the money.
Among the report’s
recommendations were that parts of NNPC be reorganised or scrapped, an
independent review of the use of traders be set up and a transparency law be
passed requiring oil companies to disclose all payments made to Nigeria.
United States
regulators put new rules in place in August that will require US-listed oil and
gas companies to disclose payments they make to foreign governments like
Nigeria
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