……Pledges Support for Frontier Exploration
The Nigerian Senate has commended the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) for repositioning the Nigerian oil and gas industry into a competitive business environment.
Chairman of the Senate committee on petroleum resources (Upstream), Senator Bassey Albert Akpan, gave the commendation when he led members of the committee on an oversight visit to the NNPC Towers, Abuja, on Tuesday.
Senator Akpan said the visit offered the lawmakers the opportunity to have firsthand information about management’s actions in transitioning from a Corporation into a limited liability company in compliance with the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA).
“We commend the effort of Mallam Mele Kyari and his team towards repositioning NNPC post-PIA. We’ve been told about the challenges, the expectations, projections and visions for NNPC. We are very impressed that the effort of the National Assembly in passing the PIA is yielding positive outcomes,” Senator Akpan said.
He said the committee would look into the issue of funding for frontier exploration in order to ensure that the objective of boosting exploration and production in frontier basins in the next five years is met.
Earlier, the chief executive officer of the NNPC Ltd, Mallam MeleKyari, informed the lawmakers that the company is well primed to meet the growth trajectory envisaged in the PIA, stressing that it has received very positive commercial assurances from investors and partners across the globe.
It would be recalled that at a town hall meeting a fortnight ago in Abuja, Mele Kyari said with the implementation of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) the Company would emerge the most capitalized in the entire Africa.
According to him, as a result of the new legislation, NNPC Ltd would not only shed some of its toxic liabilities but gas will potentially, the most profitable on the entire continent.
According to him, the new legislation has been tipped to provide business opportunities that will enable the NNPC earn more revenue for the country.
While highlighting the significance of the PIA to the NNPC and by extension the Nigerian economy, Mallam Kyari said the new legislation has raised shareholders’ expectations on the company, even as it has given it a wide room to make progress.
He said the PIA had put “all money-making options on the table; it is up to us to take advantage of it.”
To this end, he charged employees of the organization to ensure the company becomes a commercially viable entity and a multi-billion-dollar company that will continuously deliver value to its shareholders–the over two hundred million Nigerians.
By Chibisi Ohakah, Abuja
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