Aiteo raises alarm over falsehood publication by oil major

Ambrose Nnaji

Aiteo, one of Africa’s fastest-growing energy bests, has raised the alarm over the series of plots to damage the reputation of the company and its Executive Chairman.

This is coming after an Arise Television news coverage of a press conference earlier in the month which was organised by the Concerned Nigerians and a number of leading civil society organisations, including the Arewa Consultative Youth Movement (ACYM), African Human Rights Centre (AHRC) and the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS).

In a statement made available to Nation Update, the company alerted the public on a plot by oil giant, Shell Petroleum, to instigate and propagate a global smear campaign against the company.  The company alleged that the calumnious campaign was being prosecuted by individuals and entities running a reports-for-cash media campaign among others.

“Participants confirmed that Shell has committed substantial resources towards impugning Aiteo’s corporate integrity, presumably to exert penalty and punishment on Aiteo for mustering the temerity to demand and insist on its contractual and commercial relationship rights.

We have also become aware that the execution of this campaign will rely heavily on the dissemination and deployment – anonymously, and by remunerated proxy – of deliberate misinformation and incorrect reportage aimed at discrediting and tarnishing our reputation, locally and internationally. This oblique and disingenuous campaign, which we now realise commenced a few weeks ago, appears to have been shamelessly escalated and brazenly intensified”, the report stated.

According to the statement, it would have been apt to ignore these developments as unfounded, but recent threats and other worrisome developments, at the behest of this international oil major, have made it regretfully necessary for us to put on notice, the government, our shareholders, host communities, investors, international community, other stakeholders, and the general public about the existence of this disgraceful, unbecoming and unacceptably inappropriate media campaign by its orchestrators against us.

Any objective observer will easily appreciate the motivation on the part of the international oil giant to propagate this campaign of calumny. By doing so, the outcome will create unnecessary digressions and distractions from the current issues encapsulated by our demand that Shell accounts and pays for over 16 million barrels of oil belonging to us and the Nigerian government, missing through their actions and activities.

Hitherto unchallenged evidence of this missing crude is exemplified by the discrepancies in the production figures independently reported by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR). As is standard in the industry, DPR reports actual reconciled production volumes from the wells that flow to the terminal.

Their records and statistics align with Aiteo’s reconciled production figures. NNPC, on the other hand, reports crude measured at the tanks in the terminal exclusively managed, operated and controlled by the IOC. It is the analysis of these independent reports that demonstrates the glaring discrepancies, the statement added.

Indeed, over the relevant three-year period, the figures from both government agencies show as follows: 2016 barrels, NNPC 16 million v DPR 22 million, 2017 barrels, NNPC 13.5 million v DPR 21 million and 2018 barrels NNPC 15 million v DPR 25 million.

According to the statement, clear indication that buttresses the fact that millions of barrels remained unaccounted for is the oil giant’s deployment of unapproved metering equipment at its terminal. The statement further added that complaints by Local Oil Companies (LOCs), including Aiteo, led to an investigation by DPR that made the regulatory agency to release a report that identified irregularities in that respect and condemned the methodology used by the IOC.

According to the statement, DPR issued further directions affirming its non-approval of the equipment used by the IOC.  In doing so, it imposed a sanction in the sum of N250, 000 Naira on the oil giant for violation of Part 1, Section 2(d) of the Mineral Oil Safety Regulations and the provisions of section 51 of the Petroleum Act 1969. Despite this, the IOC has continued to use the unapproved metering equipment, continually understating the crude oil due to certain LOCs, including Aiteo.

While dispute resolution between Aiteo and the IOC continues, this ploy by the IOC to incentives certain sections of the media to publish false and damning reports targeted at maligning the reputation of Aiteo and its management is being shamelessly deployed as a means of muddying the waters and diverting the public’s attention from the pertinent current issues, the statement noted.

Aiteo, while stressing the need to differentiate between falsehoods aimed at belittling the reputation of the company and its management however appealed to all stakeholders to apply caution in dealing with malicious publications.