Former Minister for Petroleum
resources, Diezani Alison Madueke has denied an allegation by former group
managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Austen
Oniwon, that she awarded $24 billion oil swap deals without a contract during
her tenure as Petroleum Minister. Oniwon made the allegation when he appeared
before the House of Representatives ad hoc committee on Petroleum resources.
In a statement released by her
spokesperson, Clem Aguiyi today February 24th, Diezani denied the allegation
and said she will speak in due time
“Following the recommendation of the then
GMD of NNPC, the minister approved OPAs for a new term of 2 years commencing
from 1st January 2015. The entities recommended by NNPC were Sahara Energy
Resources Ltd, Aiteo Energy and Duke Oil. NNPC strongly recommended and
outlined the benefits of the OPA over the SWAPs and put forward the case for
migration from the OPA and crude exchange (SWAP) Contracts to OPAs fully. NNPC
posited that the ‘experienced benefits of the OPA to the Federation’, would be
much greater. There would have been little need to respond to this particular
issue at this time considering that the former minister is still indisposed and
would have wished to be left alone to recuperate. She will speak for herself in
due time. It is nevertheless imperative that records are set straight so that
Nigerians and posterity will know the truth. Mr. Oniwon was right when he
stated that the 445000 barrels of crude oil were the property of NNPC, bought
from the federal government of Nigeria at the prevailing rate and therefore as
GMD, he did not need the Federal Executive Councillor Presidential Approval to
enter into SWAP arrangements that will enable NNPC fulfill its statutory
obligations. It was also correct that contrary to the picture being painted in
the media, not more than 210,000 bpd out of the 445000 bpd lifted by NNPC to
ensure adequate supply and distribution of petroleum products were traded under
the SWAP arrangement. What the GMD required to execute the above was statutory
approval from the minister for the companies! Refineries chosen by NNPC to
participate in the SWAP arrangement as outlined in section 4 of the Petroleum
Act and section 20 of the NNPC Act. It is however incorrect to say that the
former minister gave ‘approval for extension’ unless ‘extension’ can legally be
substituted for “renewal” because what the Minister gave (and the records are
there) was approval for ‘renewal of contract’. And these approvals were given
based on letters of request received from the GMD of NNPC.”the statement read.
No comments:
Post a Comment