The Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) now NNPC Limited failed to account for about 107,239,436.00 barrels of crude oil lifted for domestic consumption in 2019, the report of the Auditor General for the Federation has revealed.
The report, which is before the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts headed by Hon. Wole Oke (PDP, Osun) also said that available records from performance report of two depot’s revealed that about 22,929.84 litres of PMS valued at N7.06 billion pumped to the two depots (Ibadan-Ilorin and Aba-Enugu) between June and July 2019 were not received by the depots.
This revelation form part of six audit queries from the Auditor General for the Federation as contained in the Federal Government of Nigeria consolidated financial statements for the year ended 31st December, 2019 submitted to the Clerk to the National Assembly via a letter dated August 18, 2021 and signed by the Auditor General, Adolphus Aghughu. The report identified discrepancies between the amount reported by the NNPC as transfer to the federations account and what was reported by the Accountant General of the Federation. It said that while the NNPC records showed that N1,272,606,864,000.00 was transferred by the Corporation, the amount recorded by the Accountant General of the federation was N608,710,292,773.44, showing a discrepancy of N663,896,567,227.58.
The AuGF said the Group Managing Director of the NNPC should be asked to explain the discrepancy between the two figures and remit the balance of N663,896,567,227.58 to the Federations Account for face sanction.
The report also said that the sum of N519,922,433,918.46 was transferred to the Federation Account by the NNPC based on transfer mandates, while demanding that the company provide “reconciliation statement for the difference of N88,787,862,853.96 between AGF’s figure of N608,710,296,772.42 and NNPC’s figure per transfer mandate of N519,922,433,918.46”.
It said: “Audit observed that 107,239,436.00 barrels of crude oil were lifted as domestic crude, while allocation of crude oil to refineries for a billing date of 9th January to 29th May 2019 was 2,764,267.00 bbls valued at N55,891,009,960.63” It said further that: “Information on Sale of Un-Utilized Crude oil by Refineries for 2019 was not provided, and Information on crude oil allocations from 30th May to 31st December 2019 was not provided for scrutiny.”
While alleging possible diversion of domestic crude, diversion of sale of un-utilised crude as well as possible loss of Federation Account revenue, the report said the management of the NNPC failed to respond to the audit query.
The report said: “The Group Managing Director of NNPC is requested to provide the complete schedule of allocation of Crude Oil to Refineries from 1st January to 31st December, 2019, Furnish details of sale of un-utilized crude oil and reconcile it with total domestic crude oil of 107,239,436.00 bbls lifted in 2019 and remit amount realised from sale of un-utilized crude oil to the Federation Account.
