(Quick News Africa)- The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said that the four major investments it recently embarked upon with key upstream joint venture partners are capable of providing incremental revenue to the national treasury by over $30 billion within the next 10 years.
Maikanti Baru, who is the group managing director of NNPC, stated this on Monday, while speaking at the inauguration of the reconstituted NNPC anti-corruption committee in Abuja.
“The investments, which attracted a haul of close to $3.8 billion in foreign direct investments, are intended to serve as vehicle to fast-track the prevailing post cash-call exit era,” the corporation said in a statement signed by Ndu Ughamadu, its group general manager, group public affairs division.
The alternative financing upstream investments include the $1.2 billion multi-year drilling for 36 offshore/onshore oil wells under the NNPC/Chevronjoint venture, codenamed project Cheetah, and the $800 million tripartite alternative funding agreement between NNPC/First E&P JV and Schlumberger for the development of the Anyalu and Madu oil fields in the Niger Delta.
Others are the agreements executed in London last week for the $1billon NNPC/SPDC JV Project Santolina and the $780 million NNPC/Chevron Project Falcon on Sonam, which before now had been financed through JV cash calls.
Baru commended the NNPC finance and technical teams for being able to attract the much needed foreign investment at a period when it has become increasingly difficult to attract foreign credit facilities.
According to him, “these four projects alone are going to raise incremental revenues to Nigeria of over $30 billion over the life of the projects in less than 10 years, and will also serve as part of the vehicle for exiting JV cash calls.
“We have to pay our arrears of about $6 billion that were incurred pre-2016 and we are also paying up a tranche of about $1 billion 2016 arrears. We started in April 2017 with the payment of $400 million and we will pay the balance before the anniversary of the first payment.’’
The GMD explained that the arrangement would allow the corporation to subsequently operate from the production revenue, less the first line charge to government, which is the royalties and petroleum profit tax.
He said that whatever profit that accrues afterwards would be remitted to the government after deduction of production cost.
Drawing a correlation between the quest for revenue and the anti-corruption campaign, the GMD said members of staff must never allow corrupt practices to distract them from the great task ahead.
The GMD traced NNPC’s involvement in the anti-corruption campaign to the year 2000 when the federal government directed all its ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to establish in-house anti-corruption committees.
“NNPC was the first to put one in place within a month, precisely in October 2000”, he noted. Baru was also chairman of the committee at the time.
He noted that since then, the NNPC anti-corruption committee had consistently carried out its mission of eradicating corruption in NNPC through organizing sensitization campaigns, workshops, seminars and federal government publications on issues concerning corruption and economic crimes.
While thanking the former committee members that served at various times for a job well done, the NNPC boss urged the new members to surpass the achievements of the past committees in line with the present administration’s anti-graft agenda.
He emphasized that with the prevailing global economic reality; the only survival strategy at a time like this was to change from old ways of doing business and embrace the best practice of transparency, accountability and honesty with integrity.
The new NNPC anti-corruption committee is headed by Mike Stanley Balami, a group general manager in the finance and account directorate.
