Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, said the Federal Government has earned $3.420billion in eight months (January-August) from sale of oil and gas.
NNPC spokesman Ohi Alegbe said Kachikwu broke the news in his report on the Corporation’s operations for the year — in line with his promise to keep the books of NNPC and transactions in the oil gas industry open to Nigerians. Kachikwu at the weekend began the monthly publication of its provisional financial and operational reports, which detail the activities of the Corporation for Nigerians to read.
A breakdown of the oil and gas proceeds showed that $0.61billion was remitted to the Federation Account as dollar proceeds while the balance of $2.815billion was used to fund the NNPC Joint Venture (JV) cash call (counterpart funding) within the period.
Kachikwu stated that the continued decline in oil price led to insufficient cash available to meet monthly JV cash calls obligations of about $615.8million as appropriated by the National Assembly. To mitigate this effect, the Corporation was compelled to sweep all the export receipts to JV cash call funding implying a zero dollar proceed remittance to the Federation Account since April.
About N723.82billion for domestic crude oil and gas sales proceeds has been paid to the Federation Account from January to August 2015 as Naira proceeds, he added, while $607.8 million has been paid to the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) in 2015 from sales of oil and gas as dollar proceeds.