28 July 2014, Abuja – Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Andrew Yakubu, has said that most of the corporation’s Strategic Business Units (SBUs) are now better managed than they were in the past.
Yakubu stated that following an overall business rejuvenation plan which the corporation initiated to reposition it to be a commercially-focused and profit-oriented organisation in anticipation of a level-playing field that will come from the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), the NNPC has now begun to get positive business results from its SBUs.
He said this during a town hall meeting at the Port Harcourt Refining Company (PHRC), Port Harcourt, Rivers State, stressing that most of the SBUs have now transited from being cost centres to profit-making centres.
A statement from the Group General Manager, Public Affairs of NNPC, Mr. Ohi Alegbe, yesterday in Abuja quoted Yakubu as saying these shortly after inspecting the corporation’s Research & Development Centre, Integrated Data Services Limited (IDSL) as well as the PHRC.
He stated that more subsidiaries of the corporation are beginning to make profit in their day-to-day operations as a result of some initiatives his management introduced upon assumption of office as the corporation’s GMD two years ago.
Yakubu equally disclosed that as opposed to the past when the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), Nigerian Gas Company (NGC) and NNPC Retail Limited were the only SBUs that were making profits from their operations, more subsidiaries including the three refineries at Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna have now joined in reporting profits earned from their operations.
He explained that the refineries, for instance, are able to make profits from their operations because of its introduction of a scheme to supply crude oil to them by marine vessels.
Yakubu noted that the scheme was developed as a result of the constant attacks on the crude supply pipelines which created crude supply challenges for the refineries over several years.
He also spoke on the long term solution to the problem of pipeline vandalism, saying that plans were underway to deploy the horizontal directional drilling technology in all the corporation’s pipelines to reduce the incessant attacks on the pipelines which have become a huge drag on its operations as well as a drain on the national economy.
“For NNPC to live up to its full potential and fulfil its glorious destiny, it must adopt a radical change in its operational attitude,” Yakubu said, adding that his management was willing to support any of its SBUs that come up with innovative ideas on how to operate more efficiently and grow profit.
On NPDC, he stated that the company has been transformed into the largest supplier of gas in Nigeria’s the domestic gas market.
According to him, “Apart from the several network of gas infrastructure that are being built to make Nigeria the hub of gas in Africa, the corporation has also succeeded in aggressively expanding the distribution of liquefied petroleum gas market (LPG) as part of measures to promote the use of cleaner fuel for domestic use.”
He reiterated that with a dedicated independent power plant which is on the verge of being completed to provide uninterrupted power supply to the PHRC, the perennial power challenge faced by PHRC would soon be a thing of the past.
Providing an update on the scheduled turn around maintenance (TAM) of the PHRC, Yakubu explained that though the plan to bring in the original builders of the refinery, JGC of Japan, for the TAM had not sailed through, NNPC was still in negotiation with the companies nominated by JGC to see what value they could add to the project.
He however noted that the plant is to be kept running with the procurement of some of the components that needed to be changed and which are been fixed.
Yakubu also described the Research & Development Division of the corporation as its brainbox and one of units that has the potential of becoming a money spinner for the NNPC.
– This Day