The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd (SPDC) operated Joint Venture (JV) says it contributed $29 billion to the Nigerian government between 2012 and 2016.
Country Chair, Shell Companies in Nigeria (SCiN), Mr. Osagie Okunbor, gave the statistics in a review of Shell operations in Nigeria for 2016 while unveiling the 2017 Shell Nigeria Briefing Notes to Energy Editors in Lagos, yesterday.
He equally disclosed that the Shell shares of royalties and corporate taxes paid to the Federal Government of Nigeria in 2016 was approximately $1.4 billion (SPDC $1 billion and Shell Nigeria Exploration including Production Company (SNEPCo), $0.4 billion).
This, he said, was beside the energy which Shell companies contribute to the Nigerian economy, with Shell-operated ventures in Nigeria recording an output of some 572,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2016. He maintained that SCiN were one of the initiators and a leading sponsor of the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), which publishes payments made to the government by extractive industries including oil companies.
Regrettably, he said crude oil theft on SPDC’s pipeline network resulted in a loss of about 5,660 barrels of oil a day (bbl/d) in 2016, which is less than the 25,000 bbl/d in 2015 while the number of sabotage-related spills declined to 45 compared with 93 in 2015.
He explained: “The reduction in oil theft and sabotage-related spills from the previous year can be attributed to continued improvements in air and ground surveillance and response by government security forces, lower production levels at SPDC JV operations in the Western part of the Niger Delta due to acts of sabotage and our divestment from key pipelines in 2015.” Okunbor assured that Shell will continue to work with the government and other key stakeholders on the security challenges in its operating environment and look towards sustained and fruitful operations for the benefit of the Nigerian state and all other shareholders
