The Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation (NNPC) has announced the redeployment of the head of its
crude oil marketing division, Gbenga Komolafe.
Mr. Komolafe is now to function as group
general manager, special duties, a statement by the corporation’s Group
General Manager, Public Affairs, Ohi Alegbe, said.
The most senior General Manager in the
Crude Oil Marketing Division, Musa Yola Usman, has been directed to
function as Group General Manager in acting capacity.
Mr. Komolafe’s removal came three days
after the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) released a report
suggesting that over $32 billion oil revenue was lost to NNPC’s
mismanagement of Domestic Crude Allocation (DCA), opaque revenue
retention practices and corruption-ridden oil-for-product swap
agreements.
There is no evidence that his removal
has any link with the revelations. The report covered a 10-year period
while Mr. Komolafe was only appointed to the crude oil marketing
division last year.
The NRGI report offered a deep,
independent analysis of how NNPC sells its oil, and found that the
national oil company’s discretionary spending from domestic crude oil
sale revenues has skyrocketed, exceeding $6 billion a year for the 2011
to 2013 period (i.e. over $18 billion in three years).
The document argued that NNPC’s approach
to oil sales has remained riddled with corruption largely because of
its inability to either develop its own commercial or operational
capacities, or facilitate the growth of the sector through external
investment.
Also, the in-depth research found no
evidence that NNPC, between 2004 and 2014, forwarded to the treasury any
revenues from sales of Okono crude with volumes of over 100 million
barrels, with an estimated value of $12.3 billion.
In other words, the corporation provided
no public accounting of how it used a decade’s worth of revenues from
an entire stream of the country’s oil production.
In the same manner, losses from three
provisions in a single, offshore processing agreements (OPAs) contract,
estimated at $381 million in one year (or over $1.9 billion between 2010
till date), were identified.
This is aside the fact that NNPC
channeled Nigeria’s precious crude — worth $35 billion –to swap deals
between 2010 and 2014, the recent offshore processing agreements (OPAs)
containing unbalanced terms that did not efficiently serve Nigeria’s
needs and interest.
The report provided additional insight
regarding the monumental corruption characterizing NNPC operations and
those of its subsidiaries.
(Premium Times)
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