The Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) says the Federal government rakes in N4.3tn from oil and gas in 2021.
According to NEITI’s ‘Oil and Gas Industry Report for 2021, this represents about 40 per cent of the total revenue compared to 51 per cent in 2020.
It disclosed that the Federal Government had total revenue of N10.7tn in 2021.
It attributed the rise in oil revenue to the rise in the price of crude to$66.97 per barrel in 2021 compared to $41.65 per barrel in the previous year.
According to the organisation, while an aggregate sum of about $5.4bn was made from proceeds of exports of crude oil sales, the sum of $5.8billion was raked in from the sales of domestic crude oil, and $648million from equity gas proceeds in the year under review.
Total crude oil lifting and feedstock sales for the accounts of the Federal Inland Revenue Service and the defunct Department of Petroleum Resources in 2021 amounted to about $4bn.
Nigeria’s main revenue comes from the sale of crude oil and gas exports.
In NEITI’s report, the total revenue generated from Nigeria’s oil and gas operations in 2020 was $20.4bn, representing a 40 per cent decrease in revenue from the $34bn generated in 2019.
Also, data obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that the country earned N21tn ($45.6bn) from crude oil sales in 2022.
While delivering the welcome address during the report launch on Monday, NEITI’s Executive Secretary, Orji Ogbonnayan, currently said the share of oil and gas sales in the Gross Domestic Product declined to 3.5 per cent from 11.4 per cent in 2022.
He added that revenue from crude oil sales as of July 2023 was N2.3trillon.
On his part, Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Content and Development Monitoring Board, Simbi Wabote, advised the National Assembly and the Civil Society Organisations to hold the government accountable, following the release of the NEITI report.
“Do not play politics with the report because there is a lot of data and recommendations we can use in the report to find solutions to the challenges bedevilling the oil and gas sector and this I can assure you would catapult the economy to the next level,” he said.
Ateng Williams, representing the Senate Committee on Oil & Gas Upstream, stated that the House’s current priority was to investigate oil theft, which has cost the country a significant amount of revenue over the years.
“We regret oil theft which has degenerated over the years. We in the Senate promise to work along with NEITI to bring perpetrators to book,” he said.
