We are ready for Buhari’s reform —NNPC

We are ready for Buhari’s reform —NNPC

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has stated its readiness for the proposed reform plan of in-coming President, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd).

This is in reaction to a recent report indicating that Buhari was going
to start his ‘change agenda’ in the corporation, the Group General
Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, NNPC, Mr. Ohi Alegbe.

He said there was no pressure on the corporation at the moment, as
everybody in the system had been busy doing their job.

“There is no pressure on us; no panic anywhere. There is no panic at
the NNPC,” he said.

A recent report by Reuters had indicated that Buhari had picked the
petroleum industry as his most urgent sector priorities.

Senator Bukola Saraki of the APC was quoted to have said, “We need
to address the structural issues and leave the fiscal for now. A more
transparent NNPC is needed with reasonable accounting.”

A top Ministry of Petroleum source, who would not want to be named,
said instructions had been given to ministries, departments and
agencies of government to tidy their books following the recent
development at the federal level of government.

The source explained, “Everybody is tidying up their books so that
those coming in will have the correct books to work with. The way
instructions were given to all the MDAs is the same way NNPC was
instructed.”

This development, he explained, was to ensure there was no vacuum
in the system, as government was supposed to continue to run its
affairs as a continuum.

The long-awaited Petroleum Industry Bill was meant to change
everything from fiscal terms to overhauling the NNPC, environmental
rules and revenue sharing, but its comprehensive nature caused
disputes between lawmakers.

Uncertainties over the fiscal terms of the bill have been holding back
billions of dollars of investment, especially into capital-intensive
deepwater offshore, leading some to propose the bill be broken up into
several pieces debated separately.

Four months after the Federal Government said it was going to
intensify the search for oil in the Chad Basin in 2015, our
correspondent learnt on Wednesday this week that nothing had yet to
happen in that regard In the face of dwindling oil reserves, the Federal Government, at the end of 2014, had said it would intensify the search for oil in the Chad Basin area.

It said the prevailing security challenges in the area would not deter it
from the mission.

Nothing, however, has been said about the plan, and some
stakeholders in the oil and gas industry have said Nigerians should not expect so much this year following the change of government at the federal level.

“In spite of the dire security situation in the Chad Basin area, the
National Petroleum Investment Management Services, through our
Frontier Exploration Services, continues to explore the frontier areas
of Nigeria to increase oil and gas reserves,” the Group General
Manager, NAPIMS, Mr. Jonathan Okehs, said in a post on the
organisation’s website at the beginning of the year.

But a government source, who would not want to be named, told our
correspondent that currently, there were more pressing issues to
attend to than intensify the search for oil in Chad.

According to him, high level of uncertainty in the NNPC and the oil
industry at large given the change of government at the federal level,
was enough to distract the NNPC from such line of action.

The World Bank recently threw its weight behind the President-elect to
probe the NNPC over allegations of missing funds.

The World Bank’s Chief Economist for Africa, Mr. Francisco Ferreira,
said looking into financial records of the country, especially allegation
of corruption at the NNPC, would check impunity and build public
institutions in the future.