The Indian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Ajjampur R. Ghanashyam, has revealed how the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation used intermediaries in the annual $14 billion deal instead of just signing a long-term agreement with New Delhi, Nigeria’s Number One oil buyer.
Daily Trust reports that the Indian High Commissioner said that aside the lack of long-term agreement between the two countries on crude oil purchases, in 2006, an Indian company, Oil & Natural Gas Commission Videsh Limited (OVL) and Mittal Energy International, which is a joint venture between OVL, an Indian government company, and Mittal Energy a private firm, applied for oil concession. The Signature bonus sum of $25 million was paid, however, neither was the oil concession granted nor the money paid returned to the Indian companies.
He lamented saying: “How many years is it? Nine years. Even to get the concession is not possible, and the money is not refunded to us. For nine years your country has been sitting on this, and they make us go round and round and round. We buy $15 billion worth of crude oil per year and we have the potential of importing $50 billion worth of crude oil from Nigeria.
Checks at the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Abuja at the weekend revealed that the letter for the signature bonus was prepared by the department, but the former minister failed to sign it until the end of the tenure of the Jonathan administration.”
Recall that speaking earlier this week Kachikwu Ibe, the newly-appointed managing director of the body, vowed to implement transparency idea by providing the authorities with the transaction operations reports on a regular basis, starting from September.
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