Federal Government has between $3 and $5 billion following the review of oil and gas projects’ contracting cycles, renegotiation of arrears of Joint Venture (JV) cash call debts to international oil companies (IOCs) which would have been spent between 2015 and 2017 to produce oil.
The Group General Manager, National Petroleum Investment Management Services, NAPIMS, Dafe Sejebor, said the continuous tweaking of the cost to produce a barrel of oil was another measure NAPIMS has used to save the country a lot.
NAPIMS is the investment management arm of the NNPC, and it oversees the corporation’s interests in upstream oil and gas operations amongst other responsibilities.
Speaking in Lagos at the inauguration of a seven-member anti-corruption committee on Wednesday, Sejebor said that the agency set up the committee in line with a recent directive from the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Dr. Maikanti Baru.
Sejebor stated that beyond the cut in production cost from $78 per barrel to $23, NAPIMS was working to arrive at a $17/b production cost in 2018.
He also explained that IOCs who were initially reluctant to invest in upstream oil and gas projects have now begun to make considerable investment decisions following a payoff deal for JV cash call debts which he noted would not tamper with Nigeria’s income from oil production.
On the backlogs of annual financial audits that NAPIMS had not done, Sejebor, stated that as at 2015, NAPIMS had about five years accounts that were not prepared while standard governance meetings were deferred.
“But, we have been able to clear the backlog. 2016 accounts would be ready by December,” he said adding that NAPIMS had worked tirelessly to clear all backlog of legacy contracts in order to balance its accounts to show that “NNPC has nothing to hide”.
