The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), has signed third-party financing deals with international banks on new oil and gas development worth about $3 billion. This was announced by the Group Managing Director (GMD) of NNPC, Dr. Maikanti Baru during the 42nd Nigeria annual international conference and exhibition of Society of Petroleum Engineers, SPE, held in Lagos.
“We have signed third party financing deals with international banks for new oil and gas development worth $3 billion, despite the degradation in 2016 and 2017. This demonstrates the phase in our industry and the potentials we can unlock.”
Baru said Nigeria needs to leverage on its vast mineral wealth in terms of the 37 billion barrels of oil reserves and 199 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, among others, to prop up other sectors of the economy and promote import substitution in such areas as agriculture, manufacturing, and general services.
He also said under the short, medium term, in-house, the NNPC intended to focus or raise first access base lending for NPDC, an upstream subsidiary.
The corporation had in 2017, announced it’s security synergy with International Oil Companies as part of the steps taken to stem oil and gas sabotage which involved deployment of a structured and holistic security apparatus in operational areas.
In June 2018, the corporation incurred N45.783 billion as under-recovery on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), also known as petrol, in the month of January 2018.
The amount was the highest under-recovery since January 2017 and represented a 192.04 percent appreciation compared to N15.677 billion recorded in December 2017. The amount incurred as under-recovery represented 40.97 percent of NNPC’s total remittances to the Federation account in January 2018.
Under-recovery, in downstream petroleum marketing parlance, is when the expected open market price of PMS is below the approved official retail price at the pump. The expected open price is a combination of the cost of importation and distribution of the commodity, such as marketers’ margins, landing cost, and freight cost.
Meanwhile, in years past, Nigeria was among countries with the highest gas flare rates, but a number of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects aimed at appropriate gas utilization have improved the country’s standing in this the regard.
