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…as A-Z Petroleum payment of N30 billion subsidy debt
By Christiana Ekpa
House of Representatives ad-hoc committee investigating oil subsidy payments between 2013 to 2022, Wednesday, frowned at Hyde Energy, an oil company for withholding the details of petroleum by products under Direct Sale Direct Purchase, DSDP contract with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company NNPC Limited.
The company agreed that it exports crude oil for refined products but could not account for the by products.
The insistence shocked members of the committee who stated that by products were of more value in revenue that the exported crude oil itself.
The Head, Business Development of Hyde Energy, an oil company, Abdulwahab Oseni who appeared before the committee said that the contract details under DSDP excluded value of by products.
He said: “NNPC in our DSDP contract did not asked us to refine the product. They did not asked us to give them the value of each of the bye products. They just said this crude cargo that I am giving you the value is so so amount and on the basis of that value you have to bring in petroleum products.
“There is no obligation in the DSDP contract for us to go and refine petroleum products and as trading company what we do is that we trade the cargoes and then bring in the products at the time that they asked us to bring.”
The development then prompted a member of the committee, Hon. Isiaka Ibrahim to call for an executive session to enable the company make some disclosures
The committee also demanded to know countries the company exports crude to with view to help them to write to the embassies of the countries with the aim of ascertaining the financial records.
Ruling on the matter, the chairman of the committee, Hon. Ibrahim Aliyu said: “Honourable colleagues you will agree with me that we have a very good engagement with the Hyde Energy. It’s an investigative hearing you don’t have anything to hide there no thing to fear.”
In a related development, the A-Z Petroleum Products Ltd has appealed to the House to assist the company recover about N30 billion subsidy debt owed it by the Ministry of Finance.
The Head of Business Development, Mr Hafford Udochukwu, made the appeal while appearing before the House adhoc committee investigating the actual daily consumption of of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) in Nigeria.
In his presentation to the committee chaired by Hon. Abdulkadir Abdullahi, Udochukwu there were owed N30 billion.
“We have not been paid since 2017, because of that we stopped trading in PMS. We are being owed over 30 billion naira by the government for subsidy differentials and because of that we have stopped trading.
“We have not been trading on PMS; we are kind of handicapped, severally we have written to the ministry, they have paid other, but we have not been paid.
“In fact, we went to court two months ago. We are asking the committee to prevail on the Ministry of Finance so that they can pay us the outstanding,’’ he said.
In his response, the committee chairman, Abdullahi asked that all necessary documents be made available to it to enable the lawmakers get to the root of the matter.
