-By Kenny Folarin
The Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, says it would do all in its capacity to ensure Nigeria attained three million barrels crude oil production per day in 2020.
Engr. Enorense Amadasu, Deputy Director and Head of Upstream Division at the DPR, gave the assurance in a statement.
Nigeria currently produces about 2.2 million barrels per day of oil, including condensates.
According to Ahadasu, the department will, in 2020, continue with government’s mandate to promote efficiency, accountability and transparency in the oil and gas sector, part of which, he said, is to ensure it grows crude oil production from 2.2 million barrels per day, mb/d to 3mb/d.
In response to concerns raised by stakeholders on the possibility of multi-layer taxes in the upstream segment of the industry, Amadasu said royalty was statutory and a first-line charge.
“The other cost people are talking about is the processing fee. The new amendments they (people) are concerned about is a token because these are amendments that have not been done in the past 20 years. Thus government is working with all stakeholders to ensure it is reviewed.
“The cost is a minute aspect of the production cost we are talking about. It is less than 0.0001% of the production cost.
“That basically will not have much impact on the cost of production. But when we talk of cost reduction, we are talking of how you can improve on your logistics to reduce cost, how you can benchmark your cost with other industry-related costs in the Gulf of Guinea, your data acquisition cost and other big item costs.
“We have also been given a mandate as a regulatory agency to go out and work with sister agencies to reduce production cost by 5 percent,” he said.
On the new upstream guidelines, the DPR deputy director stated that the agency will assist operators in terms of what is expected of them at every stage of their operations.
“The initiatives will promote efficiency in the industry, promote transparency and meet up with government aspirations by keying into government’s agenda on exploration and to achieve the three million barrels per day (bpd) target by year 2020 and to improve reserves to 40 billion barrels from 37 billion barrels as of today”.
He assured stakeholders that the agency has accurate data on what is produced daily all over the country.
“We, as a regulatory agency, can account for every molecule produced in this country, at the well heads, at the flow stations, and at the terminals. We have all devices to monitor and account for every hydrocarbon produced in the country today”, he said.