Chevron, Shell, Others to Remit N341bn JV Revenue to NNPCL in September

Four oil companies – Chevron Nigeria Limited (CNL), Mobil Producing Nigeria (MPN), Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) and First E&P are expected to remit N341.091 billion to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) this September, THISDAY has learnt.

The proceeds, which are from the sale of domestic crude oil in June this year, are only due to being offset this month in line with the 90-day payment terms between the parties involved.

However, an analysis of the data from the NNPCL showed that the figure fell short of the amount collected as crude oil payables from the oil companies in August.

Last month the NNPCL received N422.37 billion for 8.887 million barrels of oil for May 2022 domestic crude payable in August 2022 from its Joint Venture (JV) partners.

The companies that remitted monies in August were Chevron, Mobil, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), Total,  First E&P, as well as Addax Petroleum.

But this month, the number of firms that would pay the national oil company has dropped to four.

From the newly released data, Mobil had the highest domestic crude production with 2.849 million barrels, followed by Chevron with 2.817 million barrels.

In addition, SPDC owed 948,598 barrels worth of cash while First E&P owed the NNPCL domestic crude worth 650,011 barrels.

In monetary value, CNL will pay N131.317 billion, the equivalent of $332.61 million while MPN will remit N134.81 billion, worth $341.4 million equivalent to the greenback.

In addition, SPDC is expected to remit N45.23 billion, equivalent to $114.58 million even as First E&P will pay N29.71 billion, which is equivalent to about $72.27 million, according to the information contained in the presentation to the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC).

In all, the four companies have an outstanding payment for 7.265 million barrels cumulatively, worth $863.961 million, an equivalent of N341.091 billion.

Although the NNPCL should make remittances from crude oil sales to the Federation Account, which are shared by the three tiers of government monthly, it has not been able to do this in the last seven months.

The NNPCL blames massive oil theft, deterioration in upstream infrastructure as well as outright assets sabotage for its inability to meet the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) quota for over a year.

The National Petroleum Investment Services (NAPIMS) manages the equity holdings of the federal government JV operations with many contractors and also supervises the mechanism of funding the operations through the cash-call process, usually on a 60-40 per cent basis or 55-45 per cent basis.

The little received from oil sales is spent on petrol subsidy expected to exceed N4 trillion this year alone.

The total spending on the controversial and opaque petrol subsidy regime now exceeds revenue, with the NNPCL outstanding debt on what it terms under-recovery hitting N1.044 trillion in July.