A report to be submitted to President Goodluck Jonathan this week will conclude that Nigeria was denied huge revenues from signature bonuses through discretionary allocation of oil acreage, and also lost revenues amounting to $29 billion from gas being supplied to the Bonny LNG plant cheaper than it should have been, sources with knowledge of the panel's interim report said Monday.
The panel set up by Jonathan last February to investigate payments relating to oil and gas revenues by companies and government agencies over the last 10 years will deliver its report on Friday, the government said in a statement Monday.
The panel is headed by the former head of Nigeria's anti-graft police, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu.
The panel was charged, among other tasks, with determining and verifying all oil revenues accruing to the government, include taxes and royalties, from 2002. It concluded its assignment in September.
"The committee discovered that Shell, Agip [Eni] and Total supplied gas feedstock to NLNG plant in Bonny at prices lower than the market price, thereby depriving the federal government of revenue amounting to $29 billion," a source in the petroleum ministry said.
"It also discovered that government also lost about $5 billion to crude oil purchased by [state oil company] NNPC at lower prices contrary to government directive that the crude should be sold at market-determined prices," the source added.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., however, rejects the submission of the committee on gas sales to the six-train Bonny LNG plant and the derivable revenues, as well as the 445,000 b/d of crude oil allocated to NNPC for domestic consumption.
"It should be noted that Shell, Agip and Total, who are also NNPC partners in the NLNG project, were granted some fiscal incentives then, to encourage their participation. A 10-year tax holiday and lower gas prices were some of these incentives," an NNPC spokesman told Platts.
"But since the project has taken off and is now on good footing, the tax holiday has ended, so also the government has negotiated reviewed gas prices that are market-determined with the companies," the spokesman said.
Also, the prices of crude oil allocated to NNPC for local refining, he added, were not fixed as they are determined by the grades of crude oil made available by the government.
"The price of Bonny Light is different from that of Forcados, therefore, it's not possible to say this is the actual price NNPC should pay."
Nigerian oil minister Diezani Alison-Madueke said Tuesday that the submissions made by the committee were interim ones and that another government team had been put together to study its report and make final recommendations to the president for implementation.
Two other presidential panels that probed financial leakages in state oil firm NNPC as well management of the four state-run refineries, will also submit their reports to Jonathan on Friday, the presidential spokesman said on Monday.
Jonathan set up the panels in the aftermath of a week of strikes and protests throughout the country last January, over the abolition of fuel subsidies, with many Nigerians calling for a comprehensive clean-up of the country's oil sector and a probe of the NNPC over sleaze.
The panel on 11-member task force, which includes a former Shell country chairman in Nigeria, Basil Omiyi, will among other assignments, design a blueprint for eliminating all rent-seeking and arbitrage in NNPC, design a blueprint for separating policy from operation, and set key performance criteria for NNPC and other agencies, the statement said.
Opposition parties, the Congress for Progressive Change and the All Nigeria Peoples Party in separate statements on Sunday warned the federal government against a cover up on the panels' findings.
