Some local companies not registered by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) have reportedly lifted Nigerian crude oil valued at over N1.1 trillion in the last 10 months. According to an exclusive report published by Dailytrust, the repeated failure by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to provide clear and accurate identity of some companies it awarded multi-million dollar oil lifting contracts this year is helping these companies to escape public scrutiny.
According to the report, out of the 39 successful companies announced by NNPC to lift crude, findings indicate that 18 of the local companies are not registered with CAC although they have been lifting crude since February.
The companies were listed as Prudent Energy; Setana Energy; Emo oil; Bono; Optima Energy; Shoreline Limited; AMG Petroenergy; A. A. Rano; Cassiva Energy and Arkleen Oil and Gas Limited. Others are North West Petroleum; Brittania-U; Hyde Energy; Eterna Oil and Gas; Masters Energy; MRS Oil and Gas; Sahara Energy and Oando.
The reports further said efforts to get details on the 18 companies as well as their crude oil entitlements failed as NNPS has refused to furnish it with the details.
"A Freedom of Information (FOI) request dated August 9, 2017 to the NNPC asking for the authentic names of the 18 indigenous companies as well as their crude oil entitlements, has not been replied by the corporation as at the time of filing this report.
Some top NNPC officials responsible for crude sales approached for confidential response to the discrepancies in the companies’ identities also did not respond for months. The refusal to make information about the real identities of the companies available contradicts provisions of the Public Procurement Act, 2007, which is the legal framework for contract award and public procurement in Nigeria.
Section 38 (2) of the Act requires every procuring government entity to, on request, make available the comprehensive record of procurement proceedings to “(a) any person after a tender, proposal, offer or quotation has been accepted or after procurement proceedings have been terminated without resulting in a procurement contract.
Independent analyses conducted through foreign corporate registration databases like open corporate, fara.gov and websites of the 18 indigenous companies showed that the NNPC may have deliberately fed the public with the incorrect legal names of entities to which it is entrusting billions of dollar worth of oil sales.
For instance, a web-based search for ‘Cassiva Energy,’ one of the companies given by the NNPC as oil lifting contract beneficiary, showed that no entity exists as ‘Cassiva Energy.’ Instead, Casiva Limited was found.
Casiva Limited announced on its website, NNPC’s 2017/2018 crude off take award to the company as one of the jobs it had executed. Also, AMG Petroenergy, which the NNPC awarded the contract and the CAC said didn’t exist in its database, has a company website named as AMG Petroenergy Limited."
“AMG is very well established in Nigeria’s oil and gas downstream. Currently, AMG markets 90,000 barrels per day of crude oil in the international market from the NNPC,” the website stated about the company’s business objectives."
