Nigerian Senate has charged the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) to stop from lifting crude oil from Nigeria any oil concern without evidence of payment of statutory taxes to the government.
Chairman of senate committee on finance, Senator Solomon Adeola, who made the charge in Abuja, asserted that there are at least over 100 of such entities who have been lifting crude oil from the Nigeria without paying taxes.
Addressing the Gbenga Komolafe led NUPRC top executives when they appeared before the senate committee to deliberate on revenue losses in the maritime sector.
“The committee is directing your commission to stop all companies lifting crude oil from Nigeria until they show evidence of tax payment as they are mandated by law to pay.
“Alternatively, the companies can do a payment on account based on estimates to continue to lift Nigeria crude oil pending a time when proper reconciliation will be done on their tax liabilities in the last 10 years of operation,” Senator Adeola said.
The upper legislative chamber maintained that all the defaulting international oil companies (IOCs) lifting crude oil from Nigeria must pay their requisite tax to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) before they would be allowed to continue their operation.
According to Senator Adeola, preliminary findings by the committee showed that there was need for serious back duty investigations of all foreign oil companies lifting crude oil from Nigeria in relation to their compliance with tax obligations according to extant laws of the country.
He explained that in 2020, an audit of one of the foreign companies, TeeKay Group with 14 tankers led to the payment of about $10 million in tax liabilities to FIRS for a back duty investigation of five years. He said that there are at least over 100 of such entities who have been lifting crude oil from the country without paying taxes.
As a result, he said that “Henceforth, NUPRC, unlike the way the defunct DPR operated, must ensure that any firm lifting crude oil must have a tax clearance from FIRS. We are going to investigate about 100 companies lifting our crude oil without paying any taxes as there are no records of such payment with FIRS. We must recover all our revenue from this source.”
Senator Adeola however pointed out that the committee does not doubt the existence of a cartel that may be behind tax evasion in dollars. In view of this, he recommended a collaboration and synergy between maritime agencies like Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), Nigerian Maritime and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Nigeria Navy, NUPRC, NNPC and FIRS on the issue of tax revenue from the maritime sector.
In his reaction, Komolafe promised to supply the hard copy of a list of companies lifting crude oil that brought in soft copy alone to the committee for the process for giving clearance to ships to lift Nigerian crude oil.
He however explained that as a new agency, NUPRC is still in the process of unbundling from the old DPR.
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