The House of Representatives has dispatched a letter to former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, officially asking her to explain how she extended contracts for crude oil worth $24bn without valid agreements.
The Chairman of the House Ad hoc Committee on Crude Oil Swap, Zakari Mohammed, who confirmed on Monday that a letter had been dispatched to Alison-Madueke to appear before the committee on March 2, said that the letter was routed through the office of the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu.
Two firms, Duke Oil and Tranfigura, were given the contracts in 2011 under the controversial crude-for-refined products (swap) deals the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation executed between 2010 and 2014.
The NNPC was allocated 445,000 barrels of crude daily to refine for domestic consumption.
However, owing to the failure of the country’s three refineries, the corporation resorted to exchanging part of the crude for refined products by engaging Duke Oil and Tranfigura.
Incidentally, Duke Oil is a subsidiary of the NNPC, while Tranfigura is an offshore firm trading in Nigeria’s crude but does not pay tax to the Federal Government.
The Mohammed-led committee, which is investigating the deals, had heard last week that Duke Oil and Tranfigura got original contracts in 2010 to last one year, but that after the contracts expired in 2011, the former minister reportedly ordered an “extension” of the contracts till 2014, without any signed valid agreements with the firms.
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