NNPC making significant progress in inland basin exploration

*Mele Kyari

Ike Amos

Abuja — The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Tuesday, disclosed that significant progress has been made in the ongoing exploration of inland basins across the country.

In a statement in Abuja, Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari, stated that this is a reflection that the target of growing the nation’s reserve to 40 billion barrels by 2023 was realistic and achievable.

He noted that the NNPC was revving up exploration activities in all the frontier basins to achieve the three million barrels per day crude oil production target within the shortest possible time.

Kyari stated that his management’s focus on Transparency and Accountability with Performance Excellence (TAPE) was geared towards transforming the NNPC into a global company of distinction, stressing that the Corporation was the window to the Nigerian oil and gas industry.

He said the national oil company would invest more efforts and resources in the search for hydrocarbons in the frontier basins and the ultra-deep water basin in the Niger Delta in order to grow the nation’s reserve base.

“We promise that we are going to be transparent and accountable to all our stakeholders. We will drive this company to become a company of global excellence through excellent performance. This is very possible and there are strong indications that this is achievable,” Kyari asserted.

He stated that the NNPC would galvanize its partners in the direction of attaining national goals and aspirations for the economic wellbeing of the nation and its citizens.

He assured that the corporation, with the collaboration of other arms of the Federal Government, would create a favourable fiscal landscape that would encourage inflow of foreign direct investment into the nation’s oil and gas industry.

On the commercial level, he said NNPC would continue to meet its cash-call obligations to its Joint Venture partners on a sustainable basis to enable the international oil companies go back to exploration, maintaining that the move had already made exploration activities to start blossoming.