13 April 2012, Sweetcrude, ABUJA – Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Austen Oniwon, says the corporation is planning to raise its crude oil output to 250,000 barrels per day by 2015.
The NNPC, through its exploration subsidiary, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), produces 80,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
Oniwon disclosed the plan to raised production on Thursday while receiving a 23-man team of the faculty staff and top ranking military officers of the National Defence University, Pakistan.
A statement by NNPC’s Group General Manager, Public Affairs, Dr. Levi Ajuonuma, said the NNPC boss also told the visitors that the corporation planned to increase its refining capacity from 450,000 barrels per day to 850,000 barrels per day through the construction of three more refineries in Bayelsa, Kogi and Lagos states.
He stated that the participation by Nigeria in the upstream sector would guarantee national security and ensure that the country derived more benefits from the exploration of its hydrocarbon resources.
Oniwon also stated that in line with the idea of increased local participation in the oil and gas industry, two oil wells in which Shell Petroleum Development Company recently divested from were ceded to indigenous companies to manage.
Developments around the globe, according to him, dictate that nations must encourage indigenous capacity in their upstream sector, as international political developments may cause foreign upstream players to abandon their posts, leaving an unprepared nation in a lurch.
He spoke of the nation’s Gas Revolution Agenda, which he said would have positioned Nigeria as the regional hub for gas-based fertiliser, petrochemicals and methanol industries by 2014.
The gas initiative, he noted, would generate over 100,000 engineering-related jobs, as well as about 500,000 direct and indirect jobs in construction, logistics fabrication and agriculture.
