Reps To Investigate Operations Of Joint Venture Agreements

The House of Representatives yesterday mandated its Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream) to investigate the operations of the Joint Venture Agreements (JVA) in respect of revenue leakages.

The committee would also carry out a forensic review of the JVA books to establish the amount of income that had accrued to joint venture partners in the past seven years and the amount remitted to the federation account.

The committee is expected to report back to the House within seven weeks.

This resolution emanated from a motion moved by Rep. Ossai Ossai (PDP-Delta ) which was unanimously adopted without debate.

According to Ossai, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on behalf of the Federal Government entered into JVA with all oil companies in Nigeria.

He noted that the NNPC and the oil companies were expected to fund the joint venture operations.

Ossai said that besides the lifting of oil in agreed sharing ratio, there were associated benefits or revenues in line with their interest holdings as contained in the JVA.

The legislator said that government’s contribution to the funding of the ventures was raised in the Appropriation Acts and released by NNPC through the monthly cash calls.

He said that section 162 of the 1999 Constitution as amended required that all revenues accruing to the Federal Government be paid into the federation account.

Ossai alleged that income from sale of assets, marine transportation, haulage or pipeline transportation which formed part of the Joint Venture Operations was unaccounted for.

“These sources of the Joint Venture income amounted to billions of naira or dollars, particularly haulage or pipeline transportation as the case may be,”he said.