Uche Usim (Abuja) and Adewale Sanyaolu
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) recorded about N1.7 billion revenue loss in the 2019 financial year. This was even as the the Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari, has said the Asa North-Ohaji South (ANOH) gas project, one of the largest green field gas condensate development projects ever undertaken in Nigeria, was expected to produce 600 million standard cubic feet of gas per day, an equivalent of approximately 2.4gigawatts of electricity for the country.
The revenue loss is contained in the 2019 Audited Financial Statement (AFS) and represents a 99.7 per cent reduction over the 2018 loss of N803 billion it released five months ago.
A statement by the Corporation’s spokesman, Dr. Kennie Obateru, quoted the NNPC Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Mr. Umar Ajiya, as saying that the 2019 AFS, which was concluded five months after the release of the 2018 Audited Financial Statement, will be published on the Corporation’s website for all to see in keeping with its management’s commitment to transparency and accountability and in consonance with the principles of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) of which it is a partner.
Giving further insight into the 2019 AFS, the CFO disclosed that general administrative expenses also witnessed a 22 per cent drop from N894 billion in 2018 to N696 billion in 2019.
Ajiya said majority of the subsidiaries posted improved performance including, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company Limited (NPDC) which recorded about N479 billion profit in 2019 compared to N179 billion in 2018 representing 167 per cent increase; the Integrated Data Sciences Limited (IDSL) which recorded N23 billion profit in 2019 as against N154 million in 2018 representing 14966 per cent increase. Similarly, the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC) recorded N14.2 billion profit in 2019 compared to N9.3 billion in 2018 representing 52 per cent increase; while the refineries have maintained the same level of losses as in 2018 but which will reduce significantly in 2020 due to cost optimization drive.