The Indian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Ajjampur R. Ghanashyam,
has revealed some of the shady deals that has inhibited the country's
oil transaction under the watch of former Minister of Petroleum
Resources, Diezani Allison Madueke.
According
to a report by Daily Trust, the former petroleum minister failed to
sign a long-term agreement with New Delhi, Nigeria’s Number One oil
buyer, so as to indulge intermediaries in the annual $14 billion deal.
In
the report, the high commissioner gave a full detail of how the former
minister ensured funds from the oil deal between the two countries are
paid to intermediaries and not directly to the government coffers.
'From
other countries, when we buy oil, whatever we want to pay, we pay to
the Ministry of Finance of that country. In Nigeria, we pay to
intermediaries. We would like to be dealing directly with the Nigeria
National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). It’s not a good thing. Why should
we go through intermediaries? Secondly, we would also like to have long
term agreement, which we have with many countries: Iran, Iraq, Saudi
Arabia, and other countries from where we buy oil. Nigeria is the only
country with whom we don’t have an agreement. .. When we write a letter
to NNPC, we don’t get a response.'
Furthermore,
Ghanashyam revealed that aside the lack of long-term agreement between
the two countries on crude oil purchases, an Indian company, Oil &
Natural Gas Commission Videsh Limited (OVL) and Mittal Energy
International, applied for oil concession in 2006 but are yet to get the
permission nor $25m signature bonus, which was paid by the company.
In
his words, 'How many years is it? Nine years. Even to get the
concession is not possible, and the money is not refunded to us. For
nine years your country has been sitting on this, and they make us go
round and round and round.
'We buy $15 billion
worth of crude oil per year and we have the potential of importing $50
billion worth of crude oil from Nigeria. We can buy more because our
requirement is going up. But if you continue to make us to pay through
agents, and continue to ask us to buy from the swap market, it means you
don’t trust us, and if you don’t trust us, we have to look for those
who trust us more.
'We are making concessions to
Nigeria by buying your crude oil because you’re our old friends and
we’ve been friends for a long time, and your crude oil is better
quality. But you must take our interest into account,'he revealed
further.
However, Daily Trust reports that
investigation conducted at the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR),
Abuja revealed that the letter for the signature bonus was prepared by
the department, but the former minister failed to sign it until the end
of the tenure of the Jonathan administration.
Meanwhile,
the NNPC 2014 Annual Statistical Bulletin indicated that India bought
136,419,844 barrels of crude oil, at a time when the United States’ own
purchases from Nigeria was 24,047,758
.
No comments:
Post a Comment