The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) has urged international investors to channel their funds to Nigeria and tap into the huge opportunities in the nation’s energy sector. NNPCL recently revealed that apart from gas, the existing crude oil assets across the country still have huge untapped potential.
Speaking while fielding questions from NBC’s Hala Gorani during the Energy Talk segment of the Gastech Exhibition & Conference, currently taking place in Milan, Italy, Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC Ltd, Engr. Bashir Bayo Ojulari said that investors can help boost crude oil production in Nigeria from the current 1.7million barrels per day.
According to him, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu deserves a lot of praise for enhancing Nigeria’s investment climate and positioning the country as the preferred investment destination for the energy sector in Africa.
He emphasised that the new NNPC Ltd Management has vowed to deliver value to its shareholders, and he intends to keep that promise.
Ojulari maintained that while some investors are already storming the country with gas-based industries like petrochemicals and methanol plants, more investments are needed to build infrastructure to support the Federal Government’s aspiration to power Nigeria’s transportation sector with Compressed Natural Gas (CNG).
He further noted that NNCPL will do everything within its power to make Nigeria an investors’ haven.
Confirming NNPCL’s readiness to decrease gas flaring in compliance with the objectives of financing partners, he disclosed that a number of critical gas infrastructure projects in the country, like the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) Gas pipeline, are already in advanced stages.
Ojulari concluded by saying that Nigeria’s energy transition strategy is mainly focused on getting rid of energy poverty with enormous investments in gas as the fuel of choice for industrialization, as well as Liquefied Petroleum Gas as domestic cooking gas for the millions of Africans who still lack access to clean energy.
“President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has improved Nigeria’s investment climate and positioned the country as the preferred investment destination for the energy sector in Africa.
We were seeking at least 60 billion dollars in investment over the next five to seven years, which for our oil and gas industry was just the tip of the iceberg. We sought investors to grow production.
We require additional investments to build infrastructure to support the Federal Government’s aspiration to power the nation’s transportation sector with Compressed Natural Gas (CNG),” he said.
