Baru says he’ll do more for Nigeria even in retirement
*Lists NPDC’s increased output, boost to gas production as major achievements
Retiring Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Dr. Maikanti Baru, has said he would do more for Nigeria even in retirement.
Baru is expected to quit his job on July 7 following President Muhammadu Buhari’s appointment of Mele Kyari to replace him.
But, the out-going NNPC boss told journalists that even after retirement he was willing to do more if called upon to serve the country.
The group managing director, who expressed gratitude to God, attributed his success in office to his engineering background, a discipline, which according to him, prepared him for the task ahead.
Baru, who spoke at his investiture as a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Engineering, NAE, at the University of Lagos, described engineering “as a branch of study which tasks the brains and whets one’s ability for logical thinking and problem-solving thus challenging the creative instinct to solve existential problems and relieve humanity of drudgery”.
Speaking on landmark progress recorded in the last three years under his watch as helmsman of the NNPC, Baru enumerated these to include maintaining production levels well above 2 million barrels per day; increasing crude oil production by NNPC flagship upstream company, Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, NPDC; ensuring a boost in gas production to the extent that today, NNPC is the largest supplier of gas to power; and saving enormous financial resources through Direct Sale Direct Purchase, DSDP, scheme adopted for products import.
Others achievements, according to him, are ridding government of huge financial commitments on cash-call by developing workable alternative funding arrangements; devising sustainable teamwork between the Oil and Gas Industry and the numerous host communities in the Niger Delta to curb security challenges that had dipped crude oil production some years back; and instituting a regime of transparent contracting/bidding processes in all major projects.
His management, according to him, also reduced cost of crude oil production per barrel in the country from $27 to $22; explored opportunities in frontier basins to boost Nigeria’s reserves base and production; sustained petroleum products supply nationwide; and kick-started the current holistic rehabilitation of the nation’s four refineries to boost capacity utilisation.
SOURCE: sweetcrudereports.com
