Oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria were fined N1.81 billion in nine months, between January and September 2015, for flouting Federal Government’s directives on gas flaring, a data from the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN said.
This is a pointer to the fact that despite several warnings and deadlines by the Federal Government to oil companies to stop gas flaring, the practice still continues. The international community had also joined in calls for the stoppage of gas flaring due to its negative impact to the environment.
The CBN in its Third Quarter Statistical Bulletin revealed that in the first quarter of 2015, oil firms paid N670 million as penalties for gas flaring, while N790 million and N350 million were paid as penalty in the second and third quarters respectively.
In addition to the penalties for gas flaring, the Federal Government also earned N424.27 billion and N310 million as royalties and rent respectively, from the oil companies in the nine-month period.
Also, the country earned N1.532 trillion from the sale of crude oil and N258.62 billion from the sale of gas.
Further breakdown showed earned the following:
Crude oil sales – N645.79 billion in Q1, N459.89 billion in Q2, and N426.15 billion in Q3,
Gas sales – N153.03 billion, N23.68 billion and 81.92 billion in Q1, Q2 & Q3 respectively.
Pipeline fees and other miscellaneous items – N18.9 billion or N4.57 billion in Q1, N10.1 billion in Q2 & N4.23 billion in Q3.
Furthermore, total federally-collected revenue stood at ¦ 1.752 trillion in Q1 compared to ¦ 1.303 trillion in Q2 and ¦ 2.481 trillion in Q3 2014.
This, according to the report, represented an increase of ¦ 449.06 billion or 34.45 percent, but a decrease of ¦ 728.18 billion or 29.35 per cent, when compared with the levels of the preceding quarter and the corresponding quarter of 2014, respectively.
Source Vanguard