• Gets N427bn in royalties, taxes in 2016
The Federal Government has so far received about $29 billion
(N11.7 trillion) from the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria
Limited (SPDC) operated Joint Venture between 2012 and 2016, the oil company
claimed.
Also in 2016, the Shell Companies in Nigeria paid $1.4
billion (N427 billion) in royalties and corporate taxes to the Federal
Government.Payments disclosures are in line with the transparency drive of this
administration to ensure that oil companies operating in the country declared
their revenues as at when due.
More so, as there have been controversies surrounding
government receipts and actual payments claimed to have been made by the
extractive industry operators, which have created discrepancies in the yearly
audit reports by the Nigerian Extractive Transparency Initiative (NEITI).
Shell in a statement on Tuesday in Lagos, elaborated that
while SPDC paid $1.0 billion, the Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production
Company (SNEPCo) paid $0.4 billion in 2016.
This, it noted is besides the energy which the company
contributed to the Nigerian economy, with the Shell-operated ventures in
Nigeria recording an output of some 572,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day
last year.
Speaking at the launch of the company’s briefing notes in
Lagos on Tuesday, Country Chair, Shell Companies in Nigeria, Osagie Okunbor,
said the company remains strongly committed to the development of Nigeria.
Okunbor, who is also the Managing Director of SPDC, gave the
statistics in a review of Shell operations in Nigeria for 2016, while
presenting the 2017 Shell Nigeria Briefing Notes to energy editors.
“Shell has been operating in Nigeria for more than 50 years.
And it is not by chance that we have remained deeply committed to the
development of Nigeria, her people and her economy by efficiently and
responsibly producing oil and gas in onshore and offshore as well as distributing
gas to industries and producing liquefied natural gas for export,” he added.
Okunbor said the determination of Shell to support the
monetisation of the nation’s huge gas resources led it to establish Shell
Nigeria Gas in 1998, which now supplies gas to about 90 industrial customers in
Ogun, Rivers and Abia states.
He noted that the gas is used for power generation and
processing by industries for the manufacture of domestic products ranging from
household consumables, to household utensils and hardware.
Okunbor continued: “As they worked to produce energy, Shell
Companies in Nigeria paid special attention to the welfare of host communities,
making Nigeria the second largest recipient of social investment spending in
the Shell Group after the United States.
“Areas of focus include community and enterprise development,
education, health, access-to-energy and since 2016, road safety. This is in
addition to community-driven development programmes and initiatives delivered
through the Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU), which target themes as
determined by benefiting communities.”
He noted that in a bid to involve more Nigerian contractors
in their operations, the Shell Contractor Funding initiative was expanded with
eight participating banks committing about $2.2 billion to fund contract
execution by Nigerian companies working for Shell Companies in Nigeria.
According to him, since the programme’s creation in 2011,
loans worth approximately $1 billion have been awarded to 220 small and
medium-sized Nigerian enterprises with no recorded defaults on repayment. The Shell
Contractor Fund was approved by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) at its plenary session on “Shared Value creation and local
content” in December 2016 and included in the compendium of global best
practices.
He said further that SNEPCo added to its efforts to improve
the capability of Nigerian vendors and service providers in deep water
operations by assigning significant portion of work to this category of
contractors in its recently-concluded turnaround maintenance at Bonga field.
Commenting on crude theft and other security issues in Shell
operations Okunbor said: “Crude oil theft on SPDC’s pipeline network resulted
in a loss of about 5,660 barrels of oil a day (bblpd) in 2016, which is less
than the 25,000 bblpd in 2015. The number of sabotage-related spills declined
to 45 compared with 93 in 2015.”
He explained that the reduction in oil theft and
sabotage-related spills from the previous year can be attributed to continued
improvements in air and ground surveillance, and response by government
security forces, and lower production levels at SPDC JV operations in the
Western part of the Niger Delta due to acts of sabotage and our divestment from
key pipelines in 2015.
Okunbor added: “We continue to work with the government and
other key stakeholders on the security challenges in our operating environment
and look towards sustained and fruitful operations for the benefit of the
Nigerian state and all other shareholders.”
GUARDIAN
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