Hamisu Muhammad
5 September 2008
Nigeria's daily oil production records are not captured properly by the regulatory agencies, the Chairman of the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) Professor Assisi Asobie has said.
Speaking yesterday in Abuja, Asobie said the regulatory agencies do not know exactly how much oil Nigeria produces daily.
The nation's oil industry is mainly supervised by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR).
Asobie said, "The truth of the matter is that the agencies have no enough capacity to monitor daily output by the oil companies, that is why the discrepancies between what quantity is produced and how much the nation receives as revenue exist."
He said it was challenging for NEITI to ensure that all the government agencies involved like the NNPC, DPR, Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, Central Bank of Nigeria, Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission as well as Federal Inland Revenue Service have a common platform for measuring the amount of oil produced in the country.
But NNPC and DPR yesterday said it was wrong to say they lack the records of Nigeria's daily oil output.
Speaking by telephone to Daily Trust in response to NEITI's claims, NNPC's spokesperson Dr. Levi Ajuonuma said, "What I know is that we have all records of our oil transactions."
He said anybody interested in having the data of oil output was free to seek for them, as "the record is available and is for the public."
Ajuonuma said the statement made by NEITI was unfounded and does not mean well for the industry and the nation. Also, the spokesperson of DPR Paul Osu said the statement by N EITI's chairman was unfair.
He said it was not possible to say that the oil output records with the DPR were incorrect.
Osu said the DPR has been the eye of the nation in the oil and gas industry and would never lack proper records of the sector.
Aosbie said before the establishment of NEITI, all the information obtained in the oil sector was on how much oil is sold a day and how much government receives, saying that "but now we added to that how much oil is produced, and how much is generated"
He said the NEITI has been working on implementation of the recommendation strategy plan of the last audit report by the inter-ministerial task force to produce a plan and implementation framework that will give proper and clearer picture of the oil records.
He said at the moment only Office of the Accountant General of the Federation takes control and working on electronic data capturing system that will provide clue of the oil operations and revenue generation for government.
Asobie said it was unfortunate that the regulatory agencies were only good in holding meetings "but that is not important, we want improvement in technology based information."
He said there was the need for serious coordination and inter-agency synergy to tackle the problem of poor records in the oil sector.
The chairman said NEITI is organising the West Africa Extractive Transparency Initiative conference next week to disseminate information and deepen public knowledge and awareness about EITI, NEITI and the extractive industries.
Asobie said the forum would assist in establishing synergy with professional and academic institutions as well as non-governmental organisations that have objectives that either complement or overlap with those of NEITI.
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