…….N635.3bn from solid minerals sector in 14 yrs
The Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has reported that Nigeria earns a total $741.48 billion from the oil and gas industry between 1999 and 2020.
Similarly, the agency reported that the country also generated N635.3 billion from the solid minerals sector between 2006 and 2020 fiscal years.
The Executive Secretary of the extractive industries monitoring agency, Dr. Ogbonnaya Orji, gave these figures during the Multi-stakeholders’ Roundtable on the approval of the NEITI 2021 Oil, Gas, and Mining Industry Reports held on Wednesday in Abuja.
He said: “NEITI has conducted a total of thirteen cycles of reconciliatory reports in the oil and gas sector and eleven cycles of reports in the solid minerals sector.
“These reports have disclosed total revenue earnings to the government of $741.48 billion from the oil and gas sector and N635.3 billion from the solid mineral sector. These earnings were between the years 1999-2020 (Oil and gas) and 2006-2020 (Solid minerals sector earnings)”, Orji added
Giving insights into how the agency was able to prepare the reports, the NEITI boss said that the forum was organized to involve all stakeholders for the purposes of getting the reports approved.
According to him, following extensive consultation with the international secretariat of the agency in the course of producing the reports, NEITI got a waiver for Companies, Civil Society, Media, and Government representatives to review and approve the reports to be released.
The NEITI boss recalled that the stakeholders’ roundtable was not the first time the agency adopted the approach, noting that a similar decision was made on the 2019 Industry Reports and that the global EITI gave Nigeria a waiver and approved that NEITI should convene the 2023 multi-stakeholder roundtable to review and approve the 2019 industry reports.
While highlighting some of the key findings of the reports, the industries’ ombudsman disclosed that Nigeria spent $74.39 billion (about N13.7 trillion) in subsidy payments on petroleum products from the years 2005 to 2021 with negative consequences for the nation.
The NEITI had reported in April this year that Nigeria lost 619.7 million barrels of crude between 2009 and 2020 to oil thefts and other criminal activities.
Clarifying further on the reports’ findings, the NEITI chief said: “The NEITI policy brief on crude oil theft and data pulled from NEITI industry reports of the oil and gas sector showed that between 2009 and 2020 (a 12-year period), Nigeria lost 619.7 million barrels of crude oil valued at $46.16 billion or N16.25 trillion. The volume of crude oil losses represents a loss of more than 140 thousand barrels per day.
“Between 2009 and 2018, Nigeria also lost 4.2 billion litres of petroleum products from refineries valued at $1.84 billion. These findings and recommendations on tackling crude oil theft have been submitted to the President through the Presidential Committee on Crude Oil Theft in which NEITI also served as a member”, Orji added.
