The panel handed down the threat when the 14 affected companies appeared before it on Thursday to defend the utilisation of the loans they collected.
The lawmakers described as unacceptable the fact that there was no synergy between the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the CBN on the project.
They also queried the discriminatory disbursement of the funds to the beneficiaries and wondered why some firms collected more than the N10bn credit limit.
The Chairman of the Committee, Senator Jarigbe Jarigbe, collected the records of the beneficiaries and the locations of their project sites for investigation.
Speaking at the investigative hearing, Jarigbe lamented that the funds released under the gas expansion and intervention fund were inappropriately accessed.
He said, “The task of the committee is to ensure that the companies actually expended the funds on what they collected it for.
“The observation of the committee is that there are inconsistencies in the process and the committee may not hesitate to involve the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to recover the funds.
“Some of the beneficiaries did not follow the guidelines. For instance, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources is not even aware that the funds had been released.
“The guidelines stated clearly, without ambiguity, that they are supposed to do evaluation at the ministry before the list of the qualified ones would be sent to the CBN for them to access the loans but that was not done properly.
“We have also discovered that some of the companies do not have anything on ground since they got the loan.
“The committee would investigate all the observations and work on them and let Nigerians know the true position of things.”
However, the legal adviser to one of the beneficiaries, Lee Engineering and Construction Company, Mathew Agbadon, lamented that the publication made by the committee had given the company negative publicity.
He said, “There has been a fundamental misconception out there in the public domain that some people just leverage on the CBN money, stole it and went away.
“That is far from the truth. The truth of the matter is that as a beneficiary of that scheme, we had business with the commercial bank.
“The discussion was done at the commercial bank level and due diligence was done and our application was approved.
“Based on the application, we accessed the facility as an organisation.”
“Lee Engineering has been in the oil and gas industry for 32 years with over 4, 000 employees.
“This particular project is one of the outfits of Lee Engineering, and it is located in Warri, Delta State.
“If the committee is ready to visit the project today, we are ready for it. It is 90 per cent complete.
“It is billed for commissioning in the first quarter of next year. In fact we are looking forward to President Bola Tinubu to commission the project being the first of its kind in this part of the World.”
In 2021, the Ministry initiated the National Gas Expansion Programme to encourage domestic utilisation of gas in the country.
The Director of Gas in the Ministry, Oluremi Komolafe, told the Committee that the Ministry was not aware of the disbursement of the fund even though it partnered with the CBN on the scheme.
She added that 150 applications were received, 69 companies were recommended, and presently 16 applications are being processed.
She said none of the firms whose applications were being processed made the list of beneficiaries of the scheme.
Some of the firms that claimed that they had no business with either the ministry or the CBN were rebuked by the committee.
They argued that the beneficiary got a single-digit interest rate from the commercial banks because it was part of the conditions to access the loans.
The Senate Committee on Gas, therefore, commended NiPCO Gas Ltd. and LEE Engineering & Construction for their investments in the Gas Expansion Programme and resolved to do an on-the-spot assessment of all gas projects carried out by companies funded under the CBN Gas Intervention Funds.
