The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) yesterday told divesting multinational oil companies and International Oil Companies (IOCs) giving difficult conditions for oil exploration in the country to rethink their strategies.
Group CEO of the national oil company, Mele Kyari, told an audience at the ongoing Nigeria Oil and Gas (NOG) conference in Abuja that the era of non-ending negotiations as joint venture partners was over. Kyari admitted that processes in the industry had been overly slow, blaming the “sheer inability of all of us, including our partners of inability to act quickly and promptly.”
Kyari insisted that the time for debates was over, explaining that it was time to produce more oil and more gas, rather than the unending debates. On oil pipelines, which he said has existed for over 60 years, Kyari declared that Nigeria will no longer wait for IOCs to fix the problem, describing it as a national decision.
According to Kyari, a detailed analysis of assets revealed that Nigeria can conveniently produce 2 million barrels of crude oil per day without deploying new rigs. On medium to long-term measures aimed at boosting and sustaining production, he said NNPC would replace all the old crude oil pipelines and introduce a rig-sharing programme with its partners to ensure that production rigs stay in the country for between four and five years, which is the standard practice in most climes.
He called on all players in the industry to collaborate towards reducing the cost of production and boosting production to target levels.
