The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has announced that there are massive fraudulent activities in the sales of crude in the oil and gas sector.
The corporation further cautioned unsuspecting would-be crude oil buyers to watch out for the activities of local and international fraudsters in the oil and gas sector.
The NNPC’s Group General Manager, Crude Oil Marketing Division , Mele Kyari, who was quoted in a statement by the spokesperson of NNPC, Ndu Ughamadu on Sunday, said the corporation had no habit of selling crude oil from hotel rooms as the fraudsters do.
Kyari said the good thing about the development was that the NNPC documents had not leaked.
Kyari said NNPC had been collaborating with relevant security agencies such as the Nigeria Police Force, the Department of State Services and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to check the fraudsters.
His words, “Already, this massive collaboration with security agencies is paying off.
“Some arrests have been made while, on our part, we assist the security agencies by providing evidence in the course of their prosecution.
Speaking more on how the scammers operate, Kyari said they usually lured their unsuspecting victims with higher discount offers on cargoes, offers of non-OPEC crude specification, crude allocation, and presentation of crude oil sale letters as well as conducting business from hotels.
“The entire public should know that the NNPC doesn’t do business of crude oil marketing from hotel rooms.
Kyari said, “There are very high standards we have set and if you don’t meet them, you cannot be our customer . And once you become our customer, we sign a single annual contract with you.”
He observed that the crude contracts were typically 30,000 to 32 ,000 barrels per day, which accumulated into a standard cargo size of 950,000bpd monthly and not two to three million bpd contracts as peddled by the scammers.
Kyari said that for the crude oil sales processes to be completed, the customer had to show the capability to sell the cargo to the market and that the corporation could get its money back.
He said the entire process of crude oil marketing had become seamless and real-time with electronic platforms such as Platts and Argus acting as reporting agencies for global crude trading programmes.
He said, “The beauty of selling crude oil is that the moment we sell the crude oil cargo to you, the entire world knows that cargo X is with Mr. Y. So you see, you don’t have to scavenge for who buys your crude.”
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