DPR,NEITI Bicker Over Nigeria’s Crude Oil Production Volume

4 years ago
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The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and  the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) are not on the same page on the actual oil produced in the country.
NEITI had claimed on Thursday that the country has no  knowledge of the exact volume of the natural asset Nigeria produced
Mr Paul Osu, Head, Public Affairs, DPR,  debunked the claim,every litre of crude produced in the country was adequately captured during the process of extraction.
According to him, it was the responsibility of the DPR to monitor and account for crude oil production as basis for determining government’s revenue through royalty payments by operators for sustainable development.
He said: “As a further step to boosting crude accounting process from production to export, DPR recently launched the National Production Monitoring System (NPMS).
“NPMS is an online platform for direct and independent acquisition of production data from oil and gas facilities in Nigeria.
“NPMS as an electronic data transmission tool at production and export terminals is designed to better predict the performance of oil and gas reservoirs and better production forecasting.”
According to him, the NPMS tool enables DPR to exercise surveillance, perform production monitoring and data analysis for utilisation and forecasting.
Osu said DPR as a business enabler and opportunity house would continue to develop robust and strategic initiatives to ensure timely and accurate payment of rents, royalties and other revenues due to the government
Ogbonnaya Orji, the Executive  Secretary  of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), had  during a courtesy visit to Mansur Liman, the  Director -General of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN),disclosed that Nigeria can not account for the crude oil being produced
He added  that the lack of information has persisted due to the absence of meters at wellheads and the inability to monitor deep offshore fields.
He said:“We do not have the capacity to go deep shores to know how much we are producing. As we speak, it is very difficult for any Nigerian to ascertain how much actually we are producing.This is one of the challenges that NEITI is dealing with because if you do not know how much you are producing, how would you know how much you are expected to earn?
“The companies that go deep shore that are involved in offshore exploration, none of them are indigenous Nigerian companies and they cannot really protect the interest of the country as much as Nigerians can.
“But we must concede to those companies, they are doing a great job here because without them there will be no oil industry.”
 He  added that the agency has consistently recommended that meters be placed on oil wellheads to measure the volume of crude oil produced in the country, in all its oil and gas audit reports.
According to him, efforts to reform the oil sector have not been successful because those who benefit from the outdated law governing the sector are hindering the passage of the petroleum industry bill (PIB).
“The only law that governs the oil and gas industry in Nigeria currently is the Petroleum Act of 1958. If you use this law in computations of taxes and royalties based on a very old rate, Nigeria loses a lot of revenue,” he said.
He noted that the country’s failure to update its laws in the sector means when prices go up, the country is unable to derive maximum benefit from the situation.
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