The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, has said that the corporation is projecting the inflow of $20 billion investments next year to enable it fund major projects and improve its revenue.
He described 2016 as a crucial year for the NNPC as it is expected to transit from historic loss environment to profit making domain.
In a presentation to the Petroleum Club, Lagos, at the weekend, titled: “Ongoing reforms in the oil industry: Impact of NNPC reforms on the Nigerian economy”, Kachikwu noted that the country may well be on the verge of a significant oil find in the Lake Chad area in the Northeast, based on analysis of recent seismic 3D data generated from the Chad Basin.
According to him, the corporation is injecting a lot of energy into the effort to ensure success in this regard.
The Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Mr. Ohi Alegbe , who disclosed this in a statement yesterday, quoted Kachikwu as saying: “There are signs from the latest 3D seismic studies that oil may well be very close to being found now in Lake Chad after very many years of trials. I think that this is very key. It is key both for the geographical balancing of oil production and it is also very key for the purpose of Refinery placement in the North in terms of access to crude. I am optimistic that by the end of the year we should be able to announce something major on this, ’’ the GMD said.
Dr. Kachikwu noted that in driving and developing Nigeria’s oil and gas sector, certain key areas of urgent intervention have been identified thus : running production acreages with transparent and profitable partnerships to bridge capacity and funding gaps; encourage investment inflow into to Nigeria’s oil and gas industry; engagement with local communities and driving regulation to develop the sector income- via encouragement of the fast track PIB to clarify direction and encourage long-term investment in the industry.
In engagement with host communities, Kachikwu said in the years ahead, NNPC, as the senior partner in the various Joint Venture arrangements, must take leadership in fostering a healthy and symbiotic host community engagement outlook, which must focus in what he termed “what the communities want us to do for them and not what we want to do’’.
The target includes: Reduce and audit cost, restructure corporate centre and staffing, renegotiate existing contracts, including PSCs, streamline subsidy management, boost pipeline security, enhance transparency and accountability, achieving zero tolerance for corruption, rebrand NNPC and unbundle PPMC.
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My prayer is that they find oil in abundance in the Chad basin, so that maybe now, the North will agree to decentralization of power, resource control and true federalism, since they too will now have oil to feed upon and leave the niger delta to administer theirs, while the West can focus on industrialization, cocoa etc.