Indications have emerged that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation may shun the Senate’s order to return $218.1m to the Federation Account.
The Senate on Thursday approved a recommendation by its Committee on Finance that the NNPC should return the mazuma to the Federation Account, being the balance of the gross hoisting under the third party financing.
But NNPC on Friday reeled out why it might not abide by the Senate’s directive.
The Group Managing Director, NNPC, Mr. Andrew Yakubu, told journalists that the template from which the recommendation was probably drawn was no longer business-amicable.
He verbalized, “The Petroleum Support Fund was operating predicated on Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) pricing template and it has many parameters, but lamentably the operating environment has shown pellucidly that you cannot operate within that template.”
He verbally expressed that if NNPC must be run as a profit venture, it must operate within the business environment that would enable it make profit.
The GMD verbally expressed, “So, if you engender a private template that does not consider some of the challenges that I face by virtue of the operating environment, then it is arduous.
“We have had challenges in Arepo and many other components and you ken very well that anytime that line is breached, I cannot utilize it. I have vessels and I withal need to understand energy crisis in the country and this denotes that I must have strategic storage.
“Now, I don’t have access to my onshore facilities and my pipelines. But all these are not reflected in the pricing template and when PPPRA is reconciling with me, they utilize the template.”
Yakubu, however, verbalized that if NNtPC had failed to provide petroleum prtoducts, the Senate would have evoked its management.
He verbally expressed, “If I did not do it last year, the same Senate will evoke me and ask me why there is no product. So, the only person that can do the Senate’s demand is a magician.”
