Oil Exports: Funding Constraints Stall Electronic Monitoring

Non-availability of funds has stalled electronic monitoring of Nigerian crude oil production and exports at land terminals and Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels, THISDAY investigation has revealed.

The idea of computerising of activities in all the nation’s export terminals was first conceived  in 2009 by the Federal Government to check acts of illegalities currently causing shortfall in oil exports in the country.

Towards that end, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), which superintends oil and gas activities recently established the National Data Repository (NDR), to ensure    digital platform for DPR regulatory activities and the National Production Monitoring System (NPMS), which provides the platform for transmission of production and  export data by companies.

The Federal Government had planned that the NDR, which included Electronic Data Reporting System (EDRS), would become fully operational before the end of 2010 year as it was poised to put an end to all self assessment exercise by the multi-national oil companies in the country, thereby eliminating disparity in accounting system.

The system was also expected to  ensure proper calculation of royalties and taxes to be paid by the oil producers in the country.

However, THISDAY checks at the weekend revealed that the implementation of both the National Production Monitoring System (NPMS) and the NDR has been stalled due to the inability of the Federal Government to release funds to the DPR.

It had been expected that the NPMS, if fully implemented would help Nigeria to overcome the bottlenecks currently militating against timely reporting of production data, as the new hydrocarbon accounting system will ensure that all production data are received real time in DPR offices, through the state of the art equipment and facilities.

Sources at DPR last month confirmed  the establishment of the NPMS, stating that with the new accounting system, the oil industry can now determine the exact volume of crude oil production and exports.

The source also disclosed that the NPMS was programmed in such a way that access to data would be restricted to only authorised DPR personnel, operators and officers of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources.

The NPMS provides an online platform to accurately monitor national crude oil production and exports at land terminal and Floating FPSOs.

This is achieved by implementing the electronic data transmission at export terminal onshore and offshore by DPR personnel, as well as at the offices of various operators.

Source : Thisday