KUNLE KALEJAYE

Sequel to report going round recently on Crude Oil Swap Arrangement against some indigenous oil companies, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI has come out to clarify issues surrounding the arrangement.

In the said report, 152,308,878 litres was wrongly listed against one indigenous oil company, Taleveras in the Crude Oil Swap Arrangement, after verification of the NEITI report made available.

Meanwhile, the NEITI report had listed 52,308,878.00 in USD Value and not 152, 308, 878 litres as grossly misinterpreted in the report.

Subsequently, NEITI  refuted an earlier report of USD 8 billion loss.

NEITI’s Director of Communication, Dr. Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, while commenting on the $8 billion loss said “the media report from that presentation attributed to NEITI that the nation losses $8 billion annually through crude oil Swap is false.

This is not only wrong but misleading. What NEITI presented and explained at that hearing was that there is no cost efficiency in the transactions with the offshore processing organisations.”

Leonard Kwentua a  Senior Trading and Supply Executive of Taleveras Petroleum in a statement made available to the press explained that the company’s supply of gasoline under the swap arrangement are on-going activities and the accounts are reconciled quarterly to determine what is over supplied or undersupplied.

According to Kwentua “the Barter Arrangement is a major factor responsible for the sustainability of supply and availability of Gasoline across Nigeria. International Financial Institutions are very Sensitive to Sensational Media Reports and most recently these inaccurate Reports do more harm than good in Structuring Finance for Petroleum Product Supply into Nigeria.

“Furthermore, It is on record that Taleveras is one of the most active supplier of Refined Petroleum Products in and out of Africa as a whole and in particular PPMC under the Duke/Taleveras arrangement,  we are often than not, used as a Performance Example.