“The DSS has been harassing some of us,” the Group Executive Director, Refining and Petrochemicals, NNPC, Mr. Ian Udoh, was quoted as telling Reuters.
The investigation by the DSS and anti-graft agencies involves crude oil swap deals and offshore processing agreements in which the corporation gives certain volume of crude oil to traders in exchange for refined products.
Instead of ensuring that crude oil was made available to the nation’s four refineries for domestic consumption, the immediate past Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, in conjunction with the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company, increased the crude oil swaps and OPAs from 270,000 barrels per day to 445,000 bpd, thus starving the refineries of crude oil.
President Muhammadu Buhari has instructed the NNPC to review the crude for oil products swap contracts and offshore processing agreements with trading companies because of the belief that the deals might have cost the country millions of dollars in lost revenue and refined product supply.
“There is a siege mentality here at the moment,” Udoh, an NNPC man of 36 years, was quoted as saying.
He said Buhari’s initiative had given fresh legs to media coverage of the accounting holes worth over $20bn identified by two separate investigations, and that the public pressure was dominating management meetings.
The DSS operatives were said to be closely monitoring the headquarters of NNPC in Abuja, with soldiers guarding the building, while visitors were required to go through four separate security checks.
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