TUE, AUG 18 2020-theG&BJournal– Nigeria’s national oil company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), has become an EITI supporting company, joining a group of over 65 extractives companies, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), commodity traders, financial institutions and industry partners who commit to observing the EITI’s supporting company expectations.
‘’Becoming an EITI supporting company aligns with NNPC’s corporate vision and principles of transparency, accountability and performance excellence. Our partnership with NEITI and EITI strengthens our commitment towards commodity trading transparency, contract transparency and systematic disclosure of revenues and payments. We are on a journey towards greater transparency and look forward to deepening our collaboration with the EITI to further this work,’’ says Mele Kyari, NNPC Group Managing Director who also affirmed the Corporation’s commitment to the EITI.
NNPC committed to become an EITI supporting company and also to become a member of the EITI’s state-owned enterprise (SOE) transparency network In November 2019 and since then it has developed and is implementing an action plan to meet the Expectations for EITI supporting companies. It is also working to systematically disclose data required under the EITI Standard.
‘’As part of Nigeria’s commitments as an EITI implementing country, NNPC has been working closely with the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), providing data for yearly NEITI Reports. NNPC is also working with NEITI and the EITI to further improve on SOE transparency and has made progress in systematically disclosing data required under the EITI Standard,’’ NNPC said in a statement on its website.
EITI Board Chair, Rt Hon. Helen Clark, welcomed the company’s commitment to the EITI: “NNPC plays a vital role in Nigeria’s economy. Joining the EITI as a supporting company is a welcome step in the NNPC’s journey toward achieving greater transparency and to help ensure that Nigeria’s citizens benefit from their natural resource wealth.”
Zainab Ahmed, Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning and former EITI Board member, also stressed the importance of ensuring that natural resource wealth contributes to sustainable development, saying that: “Increased transparency of Nigeria’s national oil company revenues is contributing to improvements in our country’s domestic resource mobilisation efforts.”
Established in 1977, NNPC has grown to become the largest asset holder across Nigeria’s oil and gas industry value chain. Traditionally an oil and gas entity, it is transitioning towards becoming an integrated energy company with an interest in power generation and transmission.
The state-owned company has recently taken measures to become more transparent. In June 2020, it published audited accounts for 20 of its subsidiaries. NNPC also publishes monthly financial and operations report on its website, in national dailies and online media as part of efforts to be accountable. It is working with Nigeria EITI (NEITI) on an action plan to routinely disclose information and it currently publishes some of the data required by the 2019 EITI Standard on its website.
These disclosures demonstrate NNPC’s commitment to its journey to become a more transparent national oil company. Adherence to the EITI supporting company expectations will give further impetus to NNPC’s corporate vision of greater transparency and accountability. Three areas in which there is scope for advancing transparency are revenues and payments to government, contracts governing petroleum exploration and production and consolidated group-level financial statements.
NEITI Executive Secretary, Waziri Adio, commended NNPC’s move to support the EITI: “NNPC joining the EITI as a supporting company is a major inflection point in the quest for transparency – for the company, for Nigeria’s oil and gas sector, and for the country as a whole. This is so given how critical NNPC is to the sector and to the country. NEITI welcomes this bold commitment. We will continue to work and walk with NNPC to translate its espoused commitments to transparency and accountability into concrete and sustained actions and results.”
Becoming an EITI supporting company can help state-owned companies make progress on the journey to transparency. A recent example is Qatar Petroleum, which has been an EITI supporting company since October 2019 and has now published its annual and sustainability plans for the first time.
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