By Michael Eboh

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, yesterday, disclosed that its Joint Venture, JV, payment structure requires an urgent review, stating that, henceforth, oil and gas royalties and taxes would be utilized in liquidating outstanding and future JV cash call arrears.

Joint Venture Cash Call payments, a significant obligations of the NNPC, had over the years, made it impossible for the corporation to make dollar remittances to the Federation’s Account, due mainly to the decline in the price of crude oil and dwindling crude oil production.

For instance, the NNPC is said to owe its JV partners, several billions of dollars in outstanding JV arrears, while the NNPC monthly report stated that from August 2015 to July 2016, the corporation had paid $3.163 billion to its JV partners for its JV cash call obligation.

In a statement in Abuja, Managing Director of the NNPC, Mr. Maikanti Baru, disclosed that the corporation is working out modalities that would enable it exit Joint Venture cash call arrears, adding that the new model being proposed by it would enable it plough back the profit and grow the oil and gas business in the upstream sector for the benefit of all stakeholders.

Baru stated this during a one-day working visit to the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), a Corporate Service Unit of the Corporation in charge of Federal Government portfolios in the upstream sector.

He further stated that the 12 key business focus areas of the NNPC under his watch are targeted at rejuvenating the entire business operations in order to enable the Corporation deliver on its core mandate to all its stakeholders.

He urged management and staff of NAPIMS to carry out their assignments with professional integrity by benchmarking their operations with global best practices.

He described NAPIMS as a strategic  Corporate Services Unit,  CSU, and sued for maximum support from members of staff to enable the Corporation meet its set goals in the short, medium and long term.