*3mbpd production by 2020
OpeOluwani Akintayo
04 July 2018, Sweetcrude, Abuja — The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, is looking to increase Nigeria’s crude oil reserves from the current 37 billion barrels to 40 billion barrels by 2020.
The Corporation’s Group Managing Director, Dr. Maikanti Baru made this known on Tuesday at the ongoing 2018 Nigerian Oil & Gas, NOG conference in Abuja.
According to him, the target of 40bb by 2020, is part of the state-owned firm’s efforts to move the country to a more progressive pathway to success in the coming years.
“The outlook for 2018 and beyond is to increase crude oil reserves by 1 billion barrels Year-on-Year from the current 37 billion barrels to 40 billion barrels by 2020”, he said
The NNPC’s boss who spoke during the keynote address focused on outlining the corporation’s future plans and priority added that the firm also targets a crude oil production of 3 million barrels per day by 2020.
“…and also increase National oil daily production to 3 million barrels per day. Internally, for NNPC’s upstream subsidiary – The Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), the plan is to grow its production to 500,000bopd of oil and 1.5Bscfd of gas by 2020”.
Nigeria currently produces between 2-2.5 million barrels per day, according to Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu who was also present at the conference.
Baru said NNPC supports continuous the reduction of production cost in the sector, admitting the high cost of production is one of the challenges faced in the sector.
“On the strength of our performance, our immediate priority is to sustain and consolidate on what we have achieved across the value chain thus far. We are committed to executing a model that encapsulates domestic linkages into upstream oil and gas development with the attendant multiplier effect on the Nation’s economy at the lowest possible cost. Therefore, continuous cost reduction and profit maximization are central to our sustenance.”
“We realise that the challenges of diversification in the oil and gas sector are majorly in the areas of security and environment; high industry technical cost; funding of investments; infrastructural constraints; institutional capacity; obsolete legislation and fiscal regimes as well as low crude oil prices. All these are already being addressed by the current Administration and the implementation of the various recommendations are in various stages of implementation”, he said.