Mkpoikana Udoma
Port Harcourt — The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, says it has cleared the outstanding $3.8 billion joint venture cash-call debts owed to international oil companies, IOCs, operating in the country.
NNPCL’s Executive Vice President, Upstream, Adokiye Tombomieye, disclosed this as he lamented that inadequate JV cash call funds was stunting the growth of the oil and gas industry.
Tombomieye made the disclosure while speaking during a panel session on upstream opportunities at the fourth edition of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Opportunity Fair, NOGOF, 2023, organised by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, NCDMB, in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.
Represented by the Chief Upstream Investment Officer, NNPCL, Mr Bala Wunti, he disclosed that the country’s oil production has maintained significantly increase following measures to tackle crude oil theft.
Tombomieye warned that the NNPCL would no longer deal with portfolio companies, and urged investors to avoid acting as middlemen.
He disclosed that the company had leveraged its financial autonomy derived from the Petroleum Industry Act, PIA, to work out and execute a payment plan for the cash call debt while balancing its energy security obligations to the nation.
“This, by no small means, re-energised the JVs to recalibrate their focus towards sustaining production and increasing their spending to procure the necessary services required to do so,” the NNPCL chief said.
Also speaking on the panel, the Managing Director of TotalEnergies EP Nigeria Limited, Mr Mike Sangster, announced that the final investment decision on the company’s upcoming Ubeta gas project would be taken in the first quarter of 2024.
Sangster, represented by the Executive Director, JV Assets, TotalEnergies, Mr. Obi Imemba, said Ubeta was its last discovered but undeveloped well in the Oil Mining Lease, OML, 58.
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