By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr Maikanti Baru, has disclosed that the Corporation was ready to grow the nation’s oil and gas reserves.
Mr Baru, speaking in Lagos on Tuesday, noted that the NNPC was taking advantage of the lower cost opportunities of crude oil prices in identifying additional reserves of the expected boom years that would definitely come due to the cyclical nature of the petroleum industry.
The NNPC boss maintained that his agency would continue to ring-fence exploration budgets in both Joint Venture and Production Sharing Contract arrangements to ensure there was work for all service providers in order to provide the needed impetus to grow the nation’s oil and gas reserves.
Dr Baru made these assertions while delivering a keynote address at the 34th Annual International Conference and Exhibition of the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) with the theme ‘Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry: Tackling Our Realities’.
“There is no need re-inventing the wheel. We are now progressing with the use of exploratory techniques that have worked on our neighbour’s side of the Basin to achieve similar results on our side.
“This will also provide a vista for NAPE and its professionals to further analyse the concept of oil generation, expulsion and entrapment in rift basins which we now know is different from the Niger Delta Basin that we are used to,” Mr Baru posited.
He declared that, “The NNPC will aggressively pursue domestic refining to take advantage of improved refining margin during periods of low oil prices.”
The NNPC boss explained that, “To address the current sub-optimal performance of the domestic refineries, a new rehabilitation strategy which includes the rehabilitation of refineries, modification of the refinery business model and governance structures that tie capital investment performance to actual refinery output are being pursued.”
In terms of security challenges, the NNPC helmsman appealed to those behind indiscriminate acts of infrastructure vandalism to put an end to the despicable acts forthwith, stressing that the destruction of critical energy infrastructure is a great threat to the economy, environment and energy security.
Conferring the highest NAPE Honorary Award on the GMD, the President of the Association, Mr Nosa Omorodion, described Mr Baru as a thorough bred professional who has impacted the industry positively assuring of NAPE’s readiness to continue to provide professional support for the Oil and Gas Industry.
Adedapo Adesanya