The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) yesterday stated that it advised the federal government in 2008 to trigger the clauses in the 1993 Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Oil Production Sharing Contract (PSC) Act as well as review the Act to enable Nigeria take more royalties, but its advice was ignored by the government.

NNPC’s claims was sequel to an ongoing investigation by the House of Representatives’ ad-hoc committee probing how the country failed to collect about $21 billion of revenue from oil produced overtime from oil fields in the deep water basins of the country because of the failure to activate a clause in the PSC Act.

The committee had last week at an interactive session with stakeholders blamed the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) for the country’s losses in this regards, but top sources in DPR told the media that it was not responsible for the losses.

The NNPC’s Group General Manager Public Affairs, Mr. Ndu Ughamadu, also stated that the corporation did what was expected of it but the government at that time failed to sufficiently act on its recommendations. Ughamadu said the current government has however submitted an executive bill to the National Assembly for the review to be done.

Source: THISDAY