Reps Discover Discrepancies In Payments Of $5.9bn Petroleum Profit Tax

The House of Representatives ad-hoc committee investigating $17 billion undeclared crude oil and natural gas proceed has revealed that some six international oil companies paid about $5.9 billion into Petroleum Profit Tax (PPT) without proper records.The payments were made into the PPT account of the Central Bank of Nigeria, but available records did not show that the billions are recorded for the same purpose.According to to documents sighted by our Correspondent, Standard Chartered Bank made the highest rate of payment into the account in the value of $2.907billion, closely followed by Chevron with $1.601billion.Other companies whose payment documents were sighted include Shell Petroleum which paid $847million, Sahara Energy paid $374million, FAMFA Oil L.imited paid $105million, Sotena Energy paid $92million while ADAK Petroleum paid $32million within the period under review.The committee also revealed that most of the payments were not found in the records of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) thereby suggesting that the oil companies did not pay PPT during the period under review.Chairman of the committee, Hon. Abdulrazak Namdas, during the continued investigation hearing stated that it was surprising to discover that the oil companies made payments amounting to billions of dollars without proper identification of what the payment stands for.We expect that if you are into oil and gas for a period of time, and you made some payment, when you are shown the document, you should be able to identify what the payment were meant for. Although, some confirmed that the payment came from them, but they dont know what it stands for.
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