Inside NNPC Oil Sales: A Case for Reform in Nigeria

Nigeria's national oil company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), sells around one million barrels of oil a day, or almost half of the country's total production. NNPC oil was worth an estimated $41 billion in 2013, and constitutes the government's largest revenue stream. Early in 2014, Nigeria's central bank governor Lamido Sanusi raised an alarm that $20 billion in NNPC oil sale revenues had gone missing.

This report picks up that story, and offers the first in-depth, independent analysis of how NNPC sells its oil. The main body of the report describes how oil sale practices have worsened since 2010, largely through the expansion (and abuse) of makeshift measures introduced to work around NNPC's fundamental problems. The authors explain why the Buhari government should pursue two tracks of reform. In the near-term, to fix urgent sources of revenue loss, it should:

1. Eliminate Nigeria's Domestic Crude Allocation.
2. Stop the discretionary retention of revenues by NNPC and its subsidiaries.
3. Fix the oil-for-product swap agreements.
4. Rid oil sales of unnecessary middlemen.
5. Improve NNPC's transparency and corporate governance.

The report also proposes that a second, more medium-term track of reform is needed before NNPC can begin serving the public interest: the tackling of the corporation's underlying structural problems.

Download the report by section or in its entirety:

• Main Report (including executive summary)
• Executive Summary
• Annex A. The Case for Eliminating the Domestic Crude Allocation
• Annex B. NNPC's Oil-for-Product Swaps
• Annex C. Government-to-Government Sales
• Complete Report including annexes

Key Documents

Below are several of the primary documents that informed the analysis contained in the report. The report contains full citations for the many other documents we utilized, a number of which (such as NNPC Statistical Bulletins and NEITI reports) are publicly available.

• Duke RPEA 2011 – full contract and supporting documents
• Duke RPEA 2011 – Duke-Taleveras subcontract
• SIR OPA 2010 – full contract
• SIR OPA 2010 – SIR-Sahara subcontract
• Aiteo OPA 2015
• Selected corporate records searches carried out in 2015
• Example of NNPC reporting to FAAC – February 2015
• Model NNPC oil sales term contract 2011
• General Conditions for NNPC Oil Sales Term Contract 2011