The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) is carrying crude-backed loan commitments estimated at N8.07tn, according to its 2024 financial statements. These liabilities span several forward-sale and project-finance deals that require large volumes of crude oil and gas to repay.
Years of weak production, revenue pressures and limited upstream investment have pushed the company to rely heavily on crude-for-cash arrangements. Many of the loans were used to refinance old debts, fund refinery projects, and support government revenue.
Major Loan Exposures
Eagle Export Funding is one of NNPCL’s biggest obligations. Two earlier tranches worth $1.57bn have been cleared, but a remaining $900m loan secured in 2023 is still outstanding. As of December 2024, the balance was N1.1tn, to be repaid with 21,000 barrels per day of crude until 2028.
Under a separate NLNG gas-supply financing, NLNG provided N772bn upfront for future gas deliveries. By year-end 2024, N472bn worth of gas remained outstanding.
Refinery rehabilitation is another major burden.
Project Yield (Port Harcourt Refinery upgrade) had N1.4tn drawn, secured with refined-product equivalent of 67,000 barrels per day. Loan repayment starts June 2025.
Project Leopard, a 5-year crude-backed facility, carried N1.3tn in outstanding commitments tied to 35,000 barrels per day, also due for repayment starting mid-2025.
The company’s largest exposure, however, is Project Gazelle, a crude-swap deal used to pay taxes and royalties on PSC assets. NNPCL had drawn N4.9tn of the N5.1tn facility, leaving N3.8tn outstanding and requiring 90,000 barrels per day in ongoing deliveries.
Between Eagle, Yield, Leopard and Gazelle, NNPCL is committed to 213,000 barrels per day—a significant share of Nigeria’s daily oil output.
Revenue Pressures
Despite a slight rise in crude production in 2024, Nigeria’s oil and gas profit fell by N824.6bn, dropping 43% from the previous year. Production averaged 1.43 million barrels per day, well below the budget target of 1.78 million barrels per day.
Restraints such as vandalism, under-investment and crude theft continued to limit revenue. Oil earnings accounted for only about 8% of total government petroleum revenue in 2024, showing a shift toward taxes and royalties rather than crude sales.
Transparency Concerns
Experts say crude-for-loan deals and opaque trading arrangements have tied up a large share of Nigeria’s oil output, reducing fresh inflows to the Federation Account. Some analysts note that NNPCL has not fully disclosed the details of several forward-sale agreements.
The World Bank earlier reported that NNPCL remitted only half of the gains from petrol-subsidy removal in 2024 due to outstanding arrears.
While analysts acknowledge that transparency at NNPCL has improved under its current leadership, they insist that the government must fully publish all crude-swap and forward-sale agreements to restore trust in oil-sector revenue reporting.
