Adewale Sanyaolu
The activities of conmen often parading themselves as genuine oil and gas contractors, and crude oil marketers took a new twist lately leaving several Nigerians vulnerable to their antics.
Often times, these scammers are in the habit of dropping names of big shots in the nation’s oil and gas sector. At the receiving end of these fraudulent practice is the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) which had always been mentioned as awarding the juicy contracts in question.
Despite the several disclaimers by the NNPC that activities surrounding crude oil lifting contracts were never done in secrecy as tenders are always advertised in local and international dailies while its website; www.nnpcgroup.com contains information relating to oil deals, many unsuspecting members of the public still fall prey to this unwholesome practice.
More worrisome is the dent this fraudulent practice has created on the country as genuine foreign investors willing to transact business are sometimes becoming skeptical of Nigerians whenever the issues of oil deals are discussed even at international conferences.
Their worry stems from the experiences of others who have had their fingers burnt in their bid to secure oil deals. A couple of these businessmen have lost billions of dollars to these scams.
In August 2017, the NNPC disclosed that its crude oil allocation programme follows strict procedures, processes and standards, while it warned unsuspecting members of the public against the activities of scammers.
Strategy by scammers
The NNPC had said that it does not sell crude oil from hotel rooms as is currently done by scammers. Shedding light on the modus operandi of the scammers, Group General Manager, Crude Oil Marketing Division (COMD), Mr. Mele Kyari, said the fraudsters usually lured their unsuspecting victims with higher discount offers on cargoes, offers of non-OPEC crude specification, crude allocation, presentation of crude oil sale letters as well as conducting business from hotels.
He said, “Some of them even go to the extent of luring their victims to hotels to transact these fraudulent crude oil contracts. The entire public should know that NNPC does not do business of crude oil marketing from hotel rooms.”
According to him, there was only one way of buying crude oil from the NNPC which is through advertisement for the selection of customers who were screened for compliance with the Corporation’s expectations and standards.
“There are very high standards we have set and if you do not meet them, you cannot be our customer. And once you become our customer, we sign a single annual contract with you”, Kyari added. He explained that the crude contracts were typically 30,000 to 32,000 barrels per day (bpd) 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 observed that for the crude oil sale processes to be completed, the customer had to show that he had the capability to sell the cargo to the market and that the Corporation could get its money back. According to him, today, 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.” He informed would-be buyers not to be gullible as the scammers always cashed in on would-be buyers gullibility to swindle them, adding that those who fall for the scammers were either not in the business or were themselves fraudulent.
NNPC warns
The NNPC recently raised the red flag on the activities of conmen who specialise in circulating phantom letters of crude oil allocation with the intent of defrauding unsuspecting would-be buyers or members of the public.
The Group Managing Director of the Corporation, Dr. Maikanti Baru, had said the activities of the international fraudsters created an unnecessary distraction for staff of the COMD who were compelled to deal with huge turnover of scam mails on a regular basis.
He urged members of the public to be wary of such dubious emails purporting to emanate from the Corporation with mouth-watering crude oil allocation offers.
Providing an insight into the activities of the nefarious group, Kyari, said the scammers function by sending fake crude oil allocation letters using names of senior NNPC officials as decoy and requesting the gullible individuals to pay certain cash deposits as commission on volume of crude received. “The gullible individuals end up paying huge sums of dollars into these accounts as commission but the reality is that nobody allocates crude oil on a piece of paper the way the scammers canvass in their dubious letters.
Efforts to nip the trend in the bud
To tackle the challenge, the COMD said it has made available the email contacts of its top officials thus allowing members of the public access to verify such emails.
While explaining that the good thing in all these unwholesome development was the fact that NNPC documents had not leaked, Kyari stressed that nearly 98 per cent of all the documents involved were fake documents produced by the scammers.
He said in line with the Federal Government’s anti-corruption crusade and NNPC Management’s commitment towards promoting transparency and accountability, COMD of NNPC had been collaborating with relevant security agencies such as the Nigerian Police Force (NPF), the Department of State Services (DSS) and the Economic & Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to checkmate these fraudsters. “Already, this massive collaboration with security agencies is paying up.
Some arrests have been made while on our part, we assist the security agencies by providing evidence in the course of their prosecution,” he noted.
He called on the general public to always alert the Corporation on suspected crude oil scammers by reporting them via the e-mail: [email protected].