The Group Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mallam Mele Kyari, has projected that Nigeria’s crude oil production output would soon hit the 1.8 million barrels per day (mb/d), quota set by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for the country.
Kyari made this forecast at a conference chaired by the Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, and organized for oil and gas industry stakeholders to discuss the challenges of crude oil theft and losses affecting the industry on Tuesday in Abuja.
Kyari, who was represented at the even by the company’s Chief Upstream Investment Officer, Mr Bala Wunti, linked the positive outlook in the upstream subsector to sundry initiatives of the government in recent months, including the introduction of the industry-wide security collaboration for the protection of hydrocarbon infrastructure.
The NNPCL Group CEO explained that the rectangular security approach, comprising NNPCL and partners, regulators, government security operators and the communities powered by the adoption of technology had helped in tackling production leakages in the upstream subsector.
According to him, the high level collaboration between government and the stakeholders has buoyed the nation’s output from an all-time low of less than one million barrels of crude oil production per day in July 2022, to the current production figure of 1.67 million barrels per day.
Kyari explained: “Furthermore the implementation of the 3DR strategy [Detect, Deter, Destroy, and Recover], the establishment of the Central Command and Control Centre for effective monitoring and coordination, the launching of the Whistle-Blowers Portal and the Crude Oil Validation Portal, and the deployment of some of the best-in-class surveillance tools and technology have been a game changer in the fight against crude oil theft and vandalism.”
He also pointed out that a key element of the collaboration had been the onboarding the private security contractors from the host communities, which were hitherto isolated, adding that “their in-depth knowledge of the terrain and modus operandi of the criminals have led to massive discoveries of illegal connections and interception of vessels ferrying stolen crude oil.
“With the current sustained efforts, facilities that have been shut down have reopened, and injection of crude oil into major trunk lines for evacuation to the terminals is being ramped up.
“The Nigerian oil and gas industry is poised to reposition itself for a sustainable growth trajectory as the efforts to rid Nigeria of the menace of crude oil theft continue to gain traction.
“A lot of work has gone into changing the narrative and bringing all the industry stakeholders together to confront a common enemy”, the NNPCL boss added
