The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari, disclosed that the National Oil Company will declare its dividends for 2020 despite of the challenges the oil sector faced this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The GMD spoke at an interactive session with the National Association of Energy Correspondents (NAEC) on Friday, 20th November 2020.
He reaffirmed the Corporation’s commitment to accountability and transparency, saying they are key to making the NNPC an efficient and profit-oriented enterprise, which is why the Company publishes its monthly operational and financial reports.
He said the NNPC was able to maintain its obligations to the Federation Account for seven (7) months unfailingly despite the impact of COVID-19 on the oil and gas industry.
In his words:
“We are optimistic that at the end of 2020, NNPC will declare dividends to Nigerians in spite of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“NNPC has never published its audited financial statement in 43 years. We came and started doing that and released the 2018 financial statement which showed that NNPC lost N803 billion.
“We were not afraid of doing that and there were a lot of criticisms that we lost money in refinery operations and pipeline business.
“We went ahead and published the 2019 audited report and was able to learn and cut cost and became more efficient.
“There is no company in the country which has cut its losses within one financial year by N800 billion.
“That means we reduced 97 per cent of our losses by cutting our cost and improving our efficiency.”
In an interactive session with journalists in Abuja over the weekend, the GMD also disclosed that the second phase of the rehabilitation of Port-Harcourt Refinery will commence in the first quarter of 2021. The state-owned refineries are to resume operations by 2023.
He said, “The vision of revamping the pipelines is in tandem with the Refineries Rehabilitation Project which we have promised to deliver by 2023.”
“I am happy to announce that the funding challenge which had stalled the second phase of the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt Refinery has been resolved. The contract for the second phase will soon be awarded and work will commence in Q1 of 2021.”
