After 43 years, NNPC publishes audited financial accounts

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) made history on Friday with the publication of its first audited financial statements after 43 years of its operation.

The annual reports and financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2018, were for 20 of the state-owned national oil company’s subsidiary companies operating within and outside the country

The companies covered in the reports published in corporation’s website last Friday included the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), Warri Refining & Petrochemical Company Limited (WRPC), Port Harcourt Refining Company Limited (PHRC), Kaduna Refining & Petrochemical Company (KRPC), and Integrated Data Services Limited (IDSL), Nigerian Products and Marketing Company Limited (NPMC), Nigerian Pipelines and Storage Company (NPSC).

The others include the National Engineering & Technical Company Limited (NETCO), Nigerian Gas and Marketing Company Limited (NGMC), Duke Oil Services (UK) Limited, Duke Global Energy Investment Limited, Duke Oil Incorporated, NNPC Retail Limited, National Petroleum Investments Management Services (NAPIMS), The Wheel Insurance, NIDAS Shipping Services, NIDAS UK Agency, and NIDAS Marine.

Disclosure good for transparency

The Executive Secretary, Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Waziri Adio, congratulated the Group Managing of the NNPC, Mele Kyari, for keeping his promise to publish the audited reports.

“Having such disclosures is good for transparency and accountability. I congratulate @MKKyari and his team and urge them to make this a regular practice and in open data format,” Mr Adio said through a tweet with his personal twitter handle, @Waziriadio.

NEITI has been in the vanguard of the sustained demand for the NNPC to make public the financial statement of its operations and those of its subsidiaries.

On assumption of office last year, Mr Kyari pledged to open the NNPC financial books to the public as part of his management’s commitment to openness, transparency, and accountability in line with the global EITI principles.

Since last year, the NNPC has always published the monthly financial and operational reports, including its upstream, downstream and oil and gas export activities.

Refineries perform poorly

As expected, all the refineries returned poor results, with Kaduna Refinery and Petrochemical Limited posting the worst performance, with an accumulated loss of over N423.43 billion compared to over N359.093 billion in 2017.

Apart from an operating loss of about N64.55 billion, Kaduna refinery reported administrative expenses of about N64.68 billion during the year, down from about N114.347 billion in 2017.

The bulk of the losses were attributed to direct operational costs, despite that none of the four refineries in the country has been functional for years.

Also, Port Harcourt Refining and Petrochemical Company Limited posted a loss of over N46.62 billion during the year, although better than over N57.8 billion loss reported in 2017.

Although the refining company earned about N1.455 billion as revenue during the year, about N22.6 billion was recorded, as gross loss for the year, with about N24.04 billion incurred as processing expenses, even with petroleum refining operations still closed since 2017.

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The bulk of the losses declared by the company were administrative expenses of about N24.03 billion, including salaries and other remunerations paid to its workers.

The Warri Refinery posted operating loss of about N45.399 billion against N85.136 billion the previous year, with the cost of sales during the year dropping from N14.54 billion in 2017 to N12.745 billion during the year and gross loss from N13.29 billion in 2017 to N10.757 billion.

Operating expenses stood at about N34.642 billion, down from N71.847 billion in 2017.

Salaries, wages, and allowances took about N13.756 billion in 2018 against N12.9 billion spent for the same purpose in 2017, while directors remuneration gulped about N270.1 million compared to N353 million spent in 2017; travels and hotel expenses took N758.9 million against N471.8 million in 2017. About N10.354 million was written off as bad debt.

Mixed Report

The upstream industry subsidiary, the NPDC, which is one of the few companies that turned in some positive report, did not perform exceptionally well.

Although the company reported earnings of N1.38 trillion as revenue against N82.4 billion in 2017, its cost of sales was about N1.05 trillion, from N483.73 billion in the previous year.

Its gross profit was N339.1 billion compared to about N398.7 billion in 2017, while its operating profit was N278.7 billion, up from N252.2 billion in 2017. Also, finance costs dropped to N19.93 billion, from N34.7 billion in 2017.

Total comprehensive income for the year stood at N799.7 billion against about N179.3 billion in 2017.

The petroleum products marketing subsidiary, the PPMC, realised about N29.55 billion as revenue, a decline from about N113.2 billion in 2017.

The cost of sales gulped about N5.23 billion, a massive drop from over N90.3 billion spent in 2017, while its gross profit increased to N24.3 billion during the year from N22.9 billion in 2017.

The company’s statement showed its comprehensive income recovered to about N11.13 billion during the year against a loss of over N42.534 billion recorded in 2017, while administrative expenses, which contributed most to the companies poor performance, dropped to about N16.233 billion from about N51.035 billion in 2017.

The NNPC Retail, which is in charge of the NNPC mega filling stations and other retail outlets across the country, reported a modest performance, with a revenue yield of about N236.64 billion compared to about N216.14 billion in 2017.

Of the revenue realised for the year, cost of sales gulped about N212.48 billion, up from N200.86 billion in 2017, with gross profit at N24.16 billion against N15.28 billion in the previous year. Profit for the year for the company stood at a paltry N2.27 billion, marginally up from about N1.82 billion in the previous year.

The gas marketing subsidiary in charge of marketing and distributing natural gas and its deliverables to major industrial users and utility distribution companies in Nigeria and the West African sub-region also posted positive returns, with a comprehensive income of about N16.6 billion against N5.2 billion recorded in 2017.

Although the company’s revenue dropped from N275.1 billion realised in 2017 to about N243.6 billion, gross profit rose to N26.28 billion during the year, from N17.94 billion in 2017, with profit before tax at N12.48 billion compared to N9.37 billion in the previous year. Cost of sales dropped to N217.4 billion, from N257.2 billion in 2017, and administrative expenses up from N8.57 billion in 2017 to N13.8 billion.