By Yange Ikyaa
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, after moving from public to a private company, has been putting structures in place to help it meet its set targets.
Recently, NNPC Limited and Sahara Group, through their joint venture business called the West Africa Gas Limited (WAGL), unveiled plans to develop and construct jetties across West African nations in order to boost the supply and penetration of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), popularly called cooking gas, in the sub-region.
The Nigerian government has been keen on developing infrastructure to take beneficial advantage in the emerging energy transition era and, with the growing LPG demand in Africa, more strategic policies and investments are being fashioned out to further promote and deepen LPG utilization in rural communities within the country and in other places on the continent.
Gas infrastructure, such as liquefaction and regasification plants, gas distribution facilities, pipelines and/or gas distribution trucks, cylinder distribution and/or segmented local distribution networks are currently expanding to houses and industries.
According to Mallam Mele Kyari, who is the NNPC’s Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, the company is now set to become the largest capitalized company in Africa.
The GMD hinted that the new NNPC on the 1st day of July crossed over to a limited liability company, both technically, financially and in every aspect. He added that on the 19th of July, the company will be officially unveiled by President Buhari, thereby issuing an open invitation to all the delegates at the NOG 2022 which was held at the International Conference Centre Abuja.
“The meaning of this to our industry is that you are going to have a partner of choice, a partner that will support you, a partner that will be the largest capitalized company in Africa.” he added.
Kyari also assured that NNPC will remain a partner that will be known for best practices in everything that one could think of because it is going to be a CAMA company, and will become another Shell or another Waltersmith. That means that decision-making will be easier and financing will also be easier.
According to him, “NNPC is here to be a partner of choice. We will be the biggest capitalized company in Africa, we will be the partner that will focus on the commercial value of every engagement that we will do, and we will be the biggest indigenous oil and gas company and therefore there is no distinction between NNPC and the rest of the partners that are here in this place.
“And as you are all acquiring assets, we will also acquire the best of assets as much as possible in order to build our asset base and, then, those that we can’t manage for our scale, we will give it to you.”
The GMD also noted that since Nigeria is number one in terms of oil reserves in Africa, “we should be the number one producer of oil.” He further confirmed that there are engagements going on and the support coming from government security agencies and the leadership of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, will help in addressing this issue around security.
Kyari said no one is drilling today except NNPC and a few others, and that he sees a clear natural decline that is happening in the oil and gas industry today and this is real and with such decline without putting money back, there are bound to be problems.
“So if you don’t drill, and decline continues, then you are not only going to see the effect of theft and other vandal actions that we are seeing today, you are also going to see the collateral effect of lack of investments,” he maintained.
Kyari further explained that the lack of investments years before the outbreak of COVID-19 had started manifesting through money supply in the market. He charged participants at the conference to reset their financing strategy and urged operators and multilateral agencies to speak to themselves about this concern.