Nigeria earned N12 trillion from oil, gas sector, says NEITI

Nigeria earned $32.63 billion (about N12 trillion) from the oil and gas sector in 2018, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) said yesterday.

The agency said in its latest oil and gas industry audit that the earnings were 55 per cent higher than the $20.99 billion posted for 2017.

The report hinted that the $32.63 billion figure indicated that the company-level financial flows into government coffers were $16.6 billion, while returns from crude oil and gas accounted for $16 billion.

Presenting a five-year trend analysis of the earnings from the extractive sector, NEITI revealed a 54.6 per cent drop from $54.6 billion in 2014 to $24.8 billion in 2015 as the income further dipped by 31.2 per cent to $17.05billion in 2016, but increased by 23 per cent to $20.99 billion in 2017 and by 55 per cent to $32.63 billion in 2018.

The document observed: “Out of the $32.63 billion earned from the sector in 2018, the sum of $19.92 billion was transferred (directly) into the Federation Account, while $5.21 billion and $4.04billion were transferred into the JV Cash Call Account and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)- designated accounts.

“The NNPC-designated accounts are the naira and dollar accounts where domestic crude sales and the federation equity, royalty, petroleum profit tax and in-kind oil sales are paid into before remittances to the Federation Account.

“$2.10 billion was transferred into third parties’ project financing accounts and $1.37 billion was recorded as subnational transfers.”

On production, the audit revealed that the total crude oil production in the country within the period under review was 701 million barrels, representing a slight increase of 1.5 per cent when compared to the 690 million barrels produced in 2017.

A further breakdown shows that joint ventures (JVs) contributed the highest production of 315 million barrels, followed by production sharing contracts (PSCs) which recorded 270.610 million barrels.