Reps ask oil companies to provide evidence of N2.6trn tax, royalty payments

The house of representatives has asked oil and gas companies with outstanding debts owed to the federal government to present evidence of taxes, royalties and levies.

Nkeiruka Onyejeocha, chairperson, ad-hoc committee responsible for the recovery of the outstanding N2.6 trillion debts owed by 77 oil and gas companies, said this on Wednesday at a panel hearing in Abuja.

The investigative hearing was based on the report of the National Extractive Industries Extractive Initiative (NEITI).

In its 2019 report, NEITI) had said 77 oil companies owing the federal government N2.659 trillion.

Onyejeocha said the firms should make submissions and provide evidence of payments and outstanding from 2019.

She added that the committee would consider other legislative approaches to enforce compliance if they failed to do so.

“We are not too happy that we can’t make use of resources available to us,” Onyejeocha said.

She urged the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) to furnish the payment records on fields from 2019 as well as the outstanding as of March 12, 2022.

The lawmaker said the NUPRC was also to provide detailed information on crude oil production and lifting, gas production and utilisation and gas flare, including payment from 2019 to date.

She also asked the NNPC to provide details of $440 million waived to Nigeria Petroleum Development Companies (NPDC) as well as profile outstanding debt owed to NUPRC, FIRS and other government revenue collecting agencies.

According to her, the committee also needed clarification on the deduction made on remittances to the federation account from domestic crude sales proceeds.

The committee asked the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to provide the bank statements of FIRS, NNPC, NUPRC for confirmation of receipts of outstanding liabilities.