Nigeria’s national oil company NNPC Ltd has committed to reversing the decline in crude production and will replace partners that fail to meet their production commitments, the group’s chief executive officer Mele Kyari said on Tuesday.
Oil production in Africa’s top exporter has plummeted in recent years, hampered by widespread theft and sabotage, as well as the withdrawal of major oil companies such as Exxon Mobil and Shell Plc from onshore fields to focus on offshore exploration.
Mr Kyari said oil production had reached 2 million barrels per day (bpd) in recent months but added that it had not been possible to sustain it, citing limited access to capital and bureaucratic delays which he vowed to resolve.
“We want to increase production… we have the reserves but we want to produce,” Mr Kyari told an energy conference in Abuja, adding that “any partner that is not doing what they are supposed to do” to help boost production would be removed from joint contracts.
NNPC has joint ventures and production sharing contracts with major oil companies that pump about 70% of Nigeria’s oil.
Mr Kyari also announced plans to replace aging pipelines and create a “rig sharing club” with partners to ensure access to drilling equipment, a strategy commonly used by state-owned oil companies around the world.
“We keep talking about increasing production, but we cannot guarantee the availability of drilling rigs in this country. We cannot continue like this,” he said. (Reporting by Elisha Bala-Gbogbo; Writing by Helen Popper)
