By Dipo Olowookere
By the year 2020, Nigeria’s crude oil and gas reserves should have reached 40 billion barrels and 200 trillion cubic feet respectively, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said.
The current Nigeria’s oil and gas reserves are around 37 billion barrels and 192 trillion cubic feet (tcl) respectively.
The agency promised to sustain frontier exploration in the inland basins in order to meet Federal Government’s aspiration to achieve this.
Group Managing Director of NNPC, Dr Maikanti Baru, while speaking in a keynote address titled: ‘NNPC’s Commercial Strategy and Priorities’ at the Nigeria Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition in Abuja, said everything was also being done to increase national crude oil production to 3million barrels per day from the current 2.2 million barrels per day.
He said further that his agency was already making efforts to ensure the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) increases its crude oil production to 500,000 barrels per day by 2020 and its gas production to 1500mmscf per day within the same period.
“Furthermore, efforts are currently ongoing amongst all stakeholders to reduce the level of gas flare by converting most of the flared volumes to ensure commerciality of the gas resources,” he stated.
Speaking further on gas commercialization, Dr Baru said efforts were on to raise between $3.6 and $4.5 billion to build the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) pipeline to help generate 3.2 gigawatts (GW) of electricity for the country.
“Beyond growing gas for the power sector, there has been a strategic positioning of the sector to support massive gas-based industrialization. We will incubate and midwife a portfolio of critical and mutually dependent investments (Central Processing Facilities, CPFs, Fertilizer, Petrochemical, Free Trade Zone, FTZ, infrastructure and Ports) which will jumpstart the gas revolution agenda. NNPC intends to develop or take equity in some of these gas-based industries such as fertilizer and others,” he said.
Another priority for the Corporation, according to the GMD, was the rehabilitation of the refineries, adding that his Management has secured the approval of the Board to pursue the rehabilitation with a view to increasing their capacity utilization to above 60 per cent.
He expressed confidence that diligent execution of the initiatives would increase the commerciality and profitability of the Corporation in the near term.
Meanwhile, while declaring open the 2017 edition of the Nigeria Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, on Monday, Dr Maikanti Baru, said Nigerian oil and gas industry was on the path of recovery with crude oil price on the upswing, decline in pipeline vandalism and drop in restiveness in the Niger Delta.
Dr Baru, who expressed delight that the NOG Conference which could not hold last year has roared back at a time when hope was rising for the industry, stated that there were indicators that things were beginning to shakeup for the industry.
The first indicator, according to him, was that cases of pipeline vandalism have reduced with a positive impact on crude oil production.
“We are having a lot of engagements with people in our core area of operations in the Niger Delta and this is bringing a lot of hope. If we go by the number of pipeline vandalism cases, they have dropped to an average of 20 per cent on a monthly basis as against a similar period last year. This is an indicator that calm is returning to the environment”, he said.
He listed other indicators to include the rise in the price of crude oil in the international market and the renewed confidence in the industry among the international oil companies as a result of the cash call exit agreements which have guaranteed a steady flow of funds.
