Gas flaring: Senate indicts IOCs on non-payment of penalties, says NUPRC abetting oil firms
The Senate has indicted International Oil firms, IOCs operating in Nigeria for their failure to remit gas-flaring penalties, as stipulated by the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA). Similarly, the upper chamber also faulted the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) for aiding the IOCs to perpetrate such act by not effectively enforcing compliance of the oil firms with the PIA Act. The Senate gave the verdict on Thursday during an engagement between the IOCs, management of the NUPRC and the Senate Committee on Gas chaired by Senator Jarigbe Agom to give account of their compliance with Metering, Gas Flaring, Decommissioning and abandonment plans. The NUPRC who initially said they were not prepared to provide information on the gas flaring fines paid by the IOCs later gave answers to the Senators on their supervisory findings on the IOcs with regards to metering, gas flaring and decommissioning. Oil firms involved include Shell Petroleum Development Company, Chevron and Total Energies while the committee threatened to sanction ExxonMobil Nigeria and Agip Company for failing to attend the meeting. As revealed by the Jarigbe, backlogs of payment were found in the report submitted by the IOCs who all admitted to Gas flaring.
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