The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has called on international investors to direct their attention to Nigeria and tap into the huge opportunities in the nation’s energy sector.
Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPCL, Mr Bayo Ojulari, made the call while answering questions from Hala Gorani of the NBC during the Energy Talk segment of the Gastech Exhibition & Conference, currently taking place in Milan, Italy.
The NNPCL GCEO commended President Bola Tinubu for improving Nigeria’s investment climate and positioning the country as the preferred investment destination for the energy sector in Africa.
He stressed that the new NNPCL Management was keen on attaining its set targets towards delivering value to its shareholders.
He said, while a number of investors were already coming into the country with gas-based industries such as petrochemicals and methanol plants, more investments were required to build infrastructure to support the Federal Government’s aspiration to power the nation’s transportation sector with Compressed Natural Gas (CNG).
Ojulari further explained that apart from gas, the existing crude oil assets have huge untapped reservoirs for investors to tap into towards boosting production from the current 1.7million barrels per day, besides over 200 oil fields currently undeveloped.
On measures being taken to make Nigeria an investors’ haven, the GCEO said NNPCL was investing heavily in carbon capture projects as well as technology to enhance energy efficiency and reduce gas flaring in compliance with the objectives of financing partners.
He said a number of critical gas infrastructure projects in the country, such as the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) Gas pipeline, are in their advanced stages, while the NLNG Train 7 Project is also being progressed.
He noted that Nigeria’s energy transition strategy is focused on eradicating energy poverty which requires enormous investments in gas as the fuel of choice for industrialisation as well as Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) as domestic cooking gas for the over six million Africans who lack access to clean energy.
Attended by over 50,000 professionals and more than 1,000 exhibitors from 150 Countries, Gastech is a leading annual gas conference where global energy leaders discuss developments that affect the future of the energy industry.
