Ike Amos
12 August 2018, Sweetcrude, Lagos — The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Sunday disclosed that it has expanded its activities to include the audit of commodity trading.
In a statement in Abuja, Executive Secretary of NEITI, Mr. Waziri Adio, stated this at a workshop for relevant government agencies and oil trading companies. Adio was represented at the workshop by Director of Communications and Advocacy of NEITI, Mr. Orji Ogbonnaya Orji.
Adio said NEITI’s decision to expand its operations in the oil and gas industry to cover commodity trading was in line with its mandate and in compliance with EITI 2016 global standards.
He explained that the overall objective of NEITI’s interest in commodity trading was to improve transparency in the sale of the state’s share of production by the government and state-owned enterprises among others.
Adio also called on the companies and government agencies involved in commodity trading to carefully study the developed templates by NEITI with a view to internalizing these new reporting requirements as part of their respective overall business model.
In their response, the statement noted that the representatives of government agencies, oil and gas companies viewed NEITI’s decision to expand its operations to commodity trading as a most welcome development.
The statement said, “They welcomed the development in view of the importance of transparency, fair competition, and good business ethics. The participants advised NEITI on areas to focus on in commodity trading. They include ensuring accurate data on production, accurate measurement of volumes of government equity crude oil including crude condensate, crude oil allocation for export and domestic use, accurate computation of in-kind revenues, taxes, and royalty.
“The agencies, marketers and crude oil traders also identified marketing contracts and related agreements, the process of transfer of income from sales of equity crude, liftings and other similar transactions as other key areas in commodity trading where NEITI is invited to pay attention.
“The workshop reviewed the templates developed to reconcile transactions in this sector and resolved to give the Marketers/Traders time to study and make inputs.
“All leading Companies and Government agencies covered in the NEITI process attended the workshop.”