Minister of state for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe kachikwu said the Launch of the oil and Gas road map tagged “7 BigWins’’ has brought about many development in the oil and gas sector in the country. Kachikwu disclosed this at the opening ceremony of the Nigeria International Petroleum Summit (NIPS), on Monday in Abuja. The five days summit is designed to be Africa’s largest and most important platform and linkage to the world.
It is fashioned after the annual Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) where technological breakthroughs are unveiled. He said that the launch of the road map had opened up so many opportunities in the sector, thereby brought about growth and development. He said that the ministry had been able to change the funding capacity of the upstream oil and gas sector in the county.
“This has energised investors in the upstream sector. Now we are beginning to see projects like Egina, 15 billion dollars; Zabazaba, potential 10 billion dollars; Bonga, potential 10 billion dollars, and the likes. So many other investments. Put at over 40 billion dollars potential investments over the next five years, if we do the right thing, set the right models and set the right policies. That is very key and that is coming from a country where investments had runaway for nearly seven to 10 years,’’ he said. The Minister further said that he targeted that over the next 10 years, Nigeria would produce an FPSO and would become self-sufficient in its own power provision He added that Nigeria would gravitate from crude oil, as it where, to very refined, clean provision of fossils.
He added that in 10 years, Nigerian companies, entities and shareholders, would begin to move from 10 per cent today, to between 40 and 50 per cent of local investments.
On the issue of the Niger Delta militancy, he said the ministry had been able to find a way of engagement that respects the communities, focus on their needs and take them serious. “Not just as agitators, but indeed, as partners in the exploration of crude oil amongst others. A lot engagements to take place, a lot more work to be done, and I have given as much time. If we continue this and can focus on host communities, we can find the peace that is essential ultimately to be able to operate in this country without difficulties.’’
He said for the first time, issues of refineries have been addresses by the ministry creating a model where target investments would go into the dilapidated refineries.
“Some of those would be announced over the next one month. We are still targeting to be able to get these refineries up and running from about 14 per cent utilisation capacity today, to about 90 to 95 per cent over the next 18 to 20 months. “If we do that, hopefully, we would begin to move drastically to self sufficiency in the production of refined petroleum products.
“There are other areas that we have made a lot of success, like the area of legislation and regulation. We have been able to bring out the gas policy, we have been able to bring out the petroleum policy. We have submitted the fiscal policy before the executive council. The Assembly itself has done a yeoman job of passing the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill.
“A lot has happened over the last two years, in the legislative and policy area. We started the early renewal of leases way before time. We are moving on it as rapidly as we can.
“We are looking at potentially going into marginal field releases. So everything thing that needs to be tackled has been done,’’ he said.
