The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Ltd has reiterated its commitment towards utilising Nigeria’s abundant gas resources to trigger Nigeria’s industrialisation and economic development.
NNPC Ltd’s Executive Vice President, Upstream, Mrs. Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, who disclosed this at the 2024 CERAWeek Conference in Houston, the United States, said Nigeria is a predominantly gas-rich country which boasts of over 200TCF of gas that can be leveraged for the country’s industrialisation and economic development.
She noted that NNPC plans to deepen gas utilisation domestically for industrialisation aside ensuring that the entire country feels and optimises the use of the resource. She said the company is vigorously opening avenues for infrastructural gas development through various gas projects spread across the country.
“Our focus is how to move from predominantly oil player to gas player and not just for gas for the sake of gas, but gas for power generation, and industrialisation, “she stated.
Eyesan observed that the NNPC Ltd is also focused on emission reduction and gas flare-out. “We want to capture all gas flared, utilize it for domestic use and ultimately, increase our energy transition footprints,” she said.
While calling on African countries to collaborate with one another to ensure even distribution of energy resources, Eyesan said collaboration is key as not all countries within the sub-region are endowed with equal proportion of energy resources.
On energy transition, Eyesan said the subject had evolved over the years, adding that for Sub-Saharan Africa, the narrative has been on how to address the energy poverty issue while for Nigeria, the NNPC Ltd. will look at areas where it has competitive advantage to define the strategy.
Meanwhile, the Executive Vice President, Gas, Power and New Energy, NNPC, Olalekan Ogunleye, identified transparency, accountability, research, technology and innovation as key drivers of the ongoing transformation in the company.
Ogunleye said the current leadership of the company has institutionalised the use of modern technology to drive its operations, a development that has created tremendous value for the company in its quest to compete with its global peers.
He said with the coming of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) in 2021, NNPC Ltd has today transformed into an integrated commercial entity that is focused on transparency and accountability, two core values that are vital towards the company’s quest to float an Initial Public Offer (IPO) at the stock exchange.