NNPC reassigns head of crude oil sales

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has announced the redeployment of the head of its crude oil marketing division, Gbenga Komolafe.

Mr. Komolafe is now to function as group general manager, special duties, a statement by the corporation’s Group General Manager, Public Affairs, Ohi Alegbe, said.

The most senior General Manager in the Crude Oil Marketing Division, Musa Yola Usman, has been directed to function as Group General Manager in acting capacity.

Mr. Komolafe’s removal came three days after the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) released a report suggesting that over $32 billion oil revenue was lost to NNPC’s mismanagement of Domestic Crude Allocation (DCA), opaque revenue retention practices and corruption-ridden oil-for-product swap agreements.

There is no evidence that his removal has any link with the revelations. The report covered a 10-year period while Mr. Komolafe was only appointed to the crude oil marketing division last year.

The NRGI report offered a deep, independent analysis of how NNPC sells its oil, and found that the national oil company’s discretionary spending from domestic crude oil sale revenues has skyrocketed, exceeding $6 billion a year for the 2011 to 2013 period (i.e. over $18 billion in three years).

The document argued that NNPC’s approach to oil sales has remained riddled with corruption largely because of its inability to either develop its own commercial or operational capacities, or facilitate the growth of the sector through external investment.

Also, the in-depth research found no evidence that NNPC, between 2004 and 2014, forwarded to the treasury any revenues from sales of Okono crude with volumes of over 100 million barrels, with an estimated value of $12.3 billion.

In other words, the corporation provided no public accounting of how it used a decade’s worth of revenues from an entire stream of the country’s oil production.

In the same manner, losses from three provisions in a single, offshore processing agreements (OPAs) contract, estimated at $381 million in one year (or over $1.9 billion between 2010 till date), were identified.

This is aside the fact that NNPC channeled Nigeria’s precious crude — worth $35 billion –to swap deals between 2010 and 2014, the recent offshore processing agreements (OPAs) containing unbalanced terms that did not efficiently serve Nigeria’s needs and interest.

The report provided additional insight regarding the monumental corruption characterizing NNPC operations and those of its subsidiaries.