NNPC, FG to create fiscal regime to attract FDIs as Nigeria makes progress in frontier basins oil exploration

Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says significant progress has been made in the ongoing exploration for oil in inland basins of the country.

Mele Kyari, group managing director of the corporation, told a team of visiting executives of the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) to the head office in Abuja, Tuesday, that the target of growing Nigeria’s oil reserve to 40 billion barrels by 2023 was realistic and achievable.

Kyari is also quoted in a statement by Ndu Ughamadu, NNPC’s group general manager, group public affairs division, as saying that the NNPC, working in collaboration with other arms of the Federal Government of Nigeria would create a favourable fiscal landscape that would encourage inflow of foreign direct investment into the nation’s oil and gas industry.

Commercially, he said NNPC would continue to meet its cash-call obligations to its joint venture (JV) partners on a sustainable basis to enable the international oil companies go back to exploration and maintained that the move had already made exploration activities to start blossoming.

The corporation stated it was revving up exploration activities in all the frontier basins to achieve the three million barrels per day crude oil production target within the shortest possible time.

Kyari was also referred to as stating that his management’s focus on Transparency and Accountability with Performance Excellence (TAPE) was geared towards transforming the NNPC into a global company of distinction, stressing that the NNPC was the window to the Nigerian oil and gas industry.

NNPC would invest more efforts and resources in the search for hydrocarbons in the frontier basins and the ultra-deep water basin in the Niger Delta in order to grow the nation’s reserve base, the statement further quoted Kyari to have said.

“We promise that we are going to be transparent and accountable to all our stakeholders. We will drive this company to become a company of global excellence through excellent performance. This is very possible and there are strong indications that this is achievable,” Kyari said.

He told the NAPE executives that the NNPC would galvanize its partners in the direction of attaining national goals and aspirations for the economic well being of the nation and its citizens.

He called for the support of NAPE to enable Nigeria attain the three million barrels per day and the 40 billion reserve aspiration.

Congratulating Kyari on his appointment, Ajibola Oyebamiji, president of NAPE, assured him of the association’s support in growing the nation’s reserve base.

He said the current management of NNPC’s vision of TAPE was in tandem with the vision of the association.