By Adedapo Adesanya
The Independent Petroleum Producers Group (IPPG) has called on the next administration to address the bottlenecks mitigating against industry growth and energy security.
This call was made by the Chairman of the group, Mr Abdulrazaq Isa, on Monday in Abuja at the ongoing sixth edition of the Nigeria International Energy Summit (NIES).
Mr Isa said the administration’s agenda for the industry should be geared toward improving investor confidence through the effective implementation of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) and strengthening regulatory institutions.
He said the incoming administration should arrest the menace of crude oil theft across the Niger Delta, which still lingered in spite of the recent successes recorded by the federal government.
Mr Isa listed others as harnessing the nation’s hydrocarbon asset, particularly gas to catalyse and rapidly industrialise the economy, building a broader value-creating midstream (gas processing plants) and downstream (refineries) and transforming Nigeria into a product supplier.
He emphasised the need to eliminate industry-wide subsidies for all hydrocarbon and refined products as they remain detrimental to the growth of a vibrant industry.
Mr Isa also called for an immediate repositioning of the industry.
“The Nigerian oil and gas industry has a very limited window to get things right and must work toward the rapid exploitation of its vast hydrocarbon assets for the socio-economic transformation and deploying same to guarantee our energy security.
“It is instructive to note that this edition of the NIES will be the last of this current administration.
“It is on that note and on behalf of the Board of Trustees and the Governing Council of the IPPG I commend President Muhammadu Buhari for his unwavering commitment to the survival and growth of our industry.
“Under his leadership, his administration has delivered unprecedented milestones across the entire industry, notably, the enactment of PIA in 2021, which has boosted investor confidence after a two-decade lull in activities.
“This landmark legislation has begun the transformation of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry and laid a solid foundation for the growth and development of the industry for future generations,’’ he said.
On his part, Mr Omar Farouk, the Secretary-General African Petroleum Producers’ Organisation (APPO), called for enabling environment for African energy security.
Mr Farouk listed challenges in the African energy industry as a lack of funding, technology and reliance on foreign markets.
He said for seven decades, Africa had been producing petroleum; it had relied essentially on external finance and always depended on foreign technology and, to some extent, expertise to produce the products.
Mr Farouk said that these three challenges had been the focus of APPO in the last three years, and it had concluded that the future of the industry lay in the hands of Africans.
“For the funding of the oil and gas projects across the continent, we have gone into partnership with the African Export-Import Bank to establish Africa Energy Bank with the objective of financing oil and gas projects in the continent.
“For technology and expertise, the APPO secretariat has just concluded a tour of institutions of oil and gas training in some of our member countries for centres of excellence in the petroleum industry.
“We want to banish the mindset that our people are too poor to buy energy and empower people to have access to energy,’’ he said.
Modupe Gbadeyanka