*NNPC increases JV cash call payments to Total, others by 0.42%
Ike Amos
Abuja — National Petroleum Investment Management Service (NAPIMS), the investment management arm of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), spent N21.47 billion in January 2021 on the rehabilitation of the country’s moribund refineries, the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline, and oil search in the frontier basins, among others.
In its report of its spending, during its February 2020 presentation to the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), NAPIMS listed the other ‘government priority project’ it funded to include the National Domestic Gas Development; Gas Infrastructure Development; Renewable Energy Development (RED); Crude Oil Pre-Export Inspection Agency Expenses and pre-export financing.
According to the report, NAPIMS disclosed that in January 2021, rehabilitation of the refineries gulped N8.33 billion; pre-export financing received N5 billion; National Domestic Gas Development N3.17 billion; and Gas Infrastructure Development N2.39 billion.
In addition, Frontier Exploration Services, which also involves the search for hydrocarbons in inland basins, especially in the northern part of the country, received N1.96 billion funding from NAPIMS; Crude Oil Pre-Export Inspection Agency Expenses and pre-export financing (NESS-FESS) received N402.69 million; Renewable Energy Development’s (RED) financing gulped N119.83 million; while N83.33 million financing was provided by NAPIMS for the Nigeria-Morocco pipeline.
In December 2020, NAPIMS had spent a total of N20.23 billion on these projects, with N8.33 billion spent on the rehabilitation of the country’s refineries; N4.19 billion and N3.17 billion spent on National Domestic Gas Development; Gas Infrastructure Development respectively; while N2.47 billion and N2.08 billion were spent on pre-export financing and Frontier Exploration Services respectively.
Furthermore, NAPIMS’ parent company, the NNPC, told the FAAC that it has increased its total Cash Call arrears repayment to its Joint Venture (JV) partners by 0.42 per cent to N3.094 billion as at November 2020, compared to N3.081 billion as at October 2020.
In the presentation to member of the FAAC, the NNPC did not provide reports of payment for December and January 2021.
Specifically, the NNPC stated that total repayments to Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), Mobil Producing Nigeria (MPN), Chevron Nigeria Limited (CNL), Total Exploration and Production Nigeria (TEPNG) and Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) stood at $455.3 million, $833,75 million, $1.04 billion, $358.85 million and $403.73 million respectively.
This, according to the NNPC, left an outstanding balance of $917.21 million, $55.48 million, $252.12 million and $370.93 million for SPDC, CNL, TEPNG, and NAOC respectively, bringing the total outstanding indebtedness to $1.59 billion.
The NNPC noted that it had concluded the payment to MPN for the arrears, adding that repayments to SPDC were from the price balance distribution on Project Santolina, while payments to CNL were from price balance distribution on Projects Cheetah and Falcon.