The Nigeria National Petroleum Company failed to account for approximately 107,239,436 barrels of crude oil meant for domestic consumption in 2019, according to the Auditor-General for the Federation.

Making this claim in one of the audit queries attached to the federal government consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2019, the auditor general, Adolphus Aghughu, said NNPC did not provide information of un-utilised crude oil by refineries for 2019.

The report detailed that the crude oil allocations from 30th May to 31st December 2019 was not provided for scrutiny.

“Audit observed that 107,239,436.00 barrels of crude oil were lifted as domestic crude, while allocation of crude oil to refineries for a billing date of 9th January to 29th May 2019 was 2,764,267.00 bbls valued at N55,891,009,960.63,” the report read.

“Information on sale of un-utilised crude oil by refineries for 2019 was not provided, and Information on crude oil allocations from 30th May to 31st December 2019 was not provided for scrutiny,” it added. 

The auditor general in the query mandated the Group Managing Director of NNPC “to provide the complete schedule of allocation of Crude Oil to Refineries from 1st January to 31st December, 2019, furnish details of sale of unutilised crude oil and reconcile it with total domestic crude oil of 107,239,436.00 bbls lifted in 2019 and remit amount realized from sale of unutilised crude oil to the Federation Account.”

The report also alleged that roughly 22,929.84 litres of premium motor spirit (PMS) valued at N7.06 billion pumped to Ibadan-Ilorin and Aba-Enugu depots between June and July 2019 were not received.

It identified inconsistencies between the amount reported by the NNPC as a transfer to the Federation’s account and what the Accountant General of the Federation recorded.

While the defunct NNPC’s records show that N1,272,606,864,000.00 was transferred, the amount reported by the federation’s Accountant General was N608,710,292,773.44, resulting in an N663,896,567,227.58 disparity.

The auditor general in the report requested that the company provide a reconciliation statement for the difference of N88,787,862,853.96 between AGF’s figure of N608,710,296,772.42 and NNPC’s figure per transfer mandate of N519,922,433,918.46.