 |
| Dr. Ibe Kachiku |
By Akinloye Oyeniyi.
To me as a Public Analyst, Commentator and critic of Buhari's government, It was like another lie and deceit which is the signature of the current government, when Dr. Ibe Kachiku-led Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC declared an operating profit of N273.74m for the month of May and reversing the losses of N35b made by NNPC over the last 15 years.
But for who I know Dr. Kachiku to be, I grudgingly accepted, and definitely planned to find out when less busy.
Yes, I have been following Dr Kachiku right from his days at the Hints magazine. His attentive writing and disemboweling of fatherhood issues in his "Fatherhood With Ibe" then was kind of what has made me placed him as serious-minded fellow, and since then been following his cedents.
And of course I had reservations when he was appointed to NNPC and Petroleum Ministry by Buhari's government, because I don't think his kind could withstand the cabal running the presidency.
So, I took my time to make use of necessary information instruments to find out from appropriate quarters if it is totally true, even outside NNPC.
These were my findings :
That the corporation posted N273.74m operating profit in May 2016 as against its operating loss of N19.43b in April. And this was attributed to improved cost efficiency at the corporate headquarters of NNPC, and performance by one of its subsidiaries, the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC);
That PPMC recorded a net gain of N17.69b as against the net loss of N6.9b in April, 2016 following complete stoppage of commercially unfavourable swaps and offshore processing agreements (OPAs);
That Direct-Sale and Direct-Purchase replaced OPAs;
That NNPC’s operating revenue for April and May 2016, were N95.51b and N142.53b, representing 30.36% and 45.32% of the monthly budget;
That NNPC's operating expenditure for April and May were N121.86b and N142.26b representing 45.62% and 52.63% of the budget for the months;
That NNPC's operating deficits of N19.43b and a margin of N0.27b were recorded for April and May 2016, as against the monthly budgeted surplus of N44.23b;
That NNPC's deficit inverted in May 2016, due to significant increase in revenue generation attributed to the rise in petroleum product sales by 51.13%;
That in crude oil and condensate production, total of 59.56m barrels of crude oil and condensate was produced in April 2016, representing average daily production of 1.99m barrels;
That of the April 2016 production, Joint Ventures (JVs) and Production Sharing Contracts (PSC) contributed about 33.82% and 46.77%, AF (Alternative Funding or Financing), NPDC and independent oil firms accounted for 13.81%, 1.73% and 3.87%;
That on NNPC’s exploration and production arm - NPDC’s PTD (period-to-date – May 2015 to April 2016) cumulative production from all fields amounted to 33,028,954 barrels of crude oil which translated to an average daily production of 90,243 barrels;
That comparing NPDC’s performance to national production, the company’s production share amounted to 4.31%;
That production from NPDC wholly operated assets amounted to 10,216,198 barrels (or 30.93% of the total production) with Okono Okpoho (OML 119) alone producing more than 82.66% of the NPDC wholly owned operated assets or 25.57% of the total NPDC total production;
That on the NPDC operated JV assets, in which NPDC owns 55% controlling interest, crude oil production amounted to 13,296,309 (or 40.26% of the NPDC total production);
That on the JV assets not operated by NPDC, production level stood at 9,516,447 barrels or 28.81% of the company’s production;
That in national gas production, NNPC produced a total of 223.63b standard cubic feet (bcf) of natural gas in May 2016 translating to an average daily production of 7.21b standard cubic feet per day (bscfd);
That for the period June 2015 to May 2016, a total of 2,836.01bcf of gas was produced, representing an average daily production of 7,749.70 mmscfd;
That production from Joint Ventures (JVs), Production Sharing Contracts (PSC) and NPDC contributed about 69.97%, 21.71% and 8.32% to the total national gas production;
That NNPC’s refinery operations, total crude processed by Kaduna, Port Harcourt and Warri refineries for May 2016 was 301,604MT (2,211,361 bbls), which translated to a combined yield efficiency of 83.47% compared to crude processed in April 2016 of 351,698MT (2,578,650 bbls) with combined yield efficiency of 89.70%; and
That in May 2016, the three refineries produced 242,053MT of finished petroleum products out of 301,604MT of crude processed at a combined capacity utilisation of 16.03% compared to 19.32% combined capacity utilisation achieved in April.
After my findings, I saw huge sanitisation and restructuring of NNPC operations, which culminated into the 15 years loss jinx broken; I quickly warned that this boldness and zeal Dr Kachiku has displayed will surely pitch him against the villa cabal who has been finding it difficult to illegally run dark businesses in the corporation.
As time progresses, the profits declaration stop coming as internal squabbles heighten and ultimately led to Dr Kachiku removal as the GMD, NNPC while on official assignment in China, and subsequent appointment of one of his Technical Advisers, Maikanti Baru who is a close associate of the cabal, to replace him. Since then it has never been business as usual; and the contents of Dr. Kachiku's memo to his substantive Minister of Petroleum leaked recently are pointers to my fear for him then. But we await what Buhari do about this.
Will he stand with the nation, or the cabal?
0 comments:
Post a Comment