Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company – Shell has reduced its annual payment to the country’ coffers by as much as 42.45 per cent.

The development is one of the many indicators that investors are increasingly reducing their stakes in Nigerian economy or perfecting plans for an outright exit.

Speaking during a television chat, the Governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki warned that investors are fleeing the country, particularly in the energy sector.

According to him, most of the oil majors including Shell and Chevron are shifting attention solar energy, thereby making oil rich country which are dependent of revenue from oil to have a rethink.

An attestation of systemic slow down over the years is contained in Shell’s report for 2020 which indicates that its subsidiaries in Nigeria paid $3.24 billion to the Nigerian government and its agencies last year (2020), compared to $5.63 billion in 2019 and $6.39 billion in 2018.

The oil giant’s payment to the Nigerian government was $4.32 billion in 2017, compared to $3.64 billion in 2016, $4.95 billion in 2015 and $3.02 billion in 2014.

Shell, in its ‘Report on Payments to Governments Report for the Year 2020’, said payments made to governments arose from activities involving the exploration, prospection, discovery, development and extraction of minerals, oil and natural gas deposits or other materials.

The report showed that Nigeria’s revenue from Shell was the highest out of the 24 countries to which it made payments last year.

It revealed that Shell companies paid $2.28 billion to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation last year as production entitlement, compared to $3.77 billion in 2019.

The oil major said $440.39 million was paid in taxes to the Federal Inland Revenue Service, down from $1.28 billion in 2019.

It said the Department of Petroleum Resources was paid $451.51 for royalties and fees, compared to $1.25 in 2019.

The Chief Executive Officer, Ben van Beurden, said in the sustainability report that the COVID-19 pandemic made 2020 a deeply challenging year.

“Tragically, it led to the deaths of 20 of our Shell colleagues, painful evidence of the gravity of the situation in many parts of the world,” he said.