The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Ltd., has restated its commitment towards utilizing Nigeria’s abundant gas resources to trigger Nigeria’s industrialisation and economic development.
Mrs. Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, NNPC Ltd’s Executive Vice President, Upstream, made this known this during a Panel Session at the ongoing 2024 CERAWeek Conference in Houston, USA on Tuesday.
She spoke at a session with the theme, “What are the Choices for Upstream Strategies?”
Eyesan noted that 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.
”NNPC Ltd plans to deepen gas utilization domestically for industrialization and ensuring that the entire country feels and optimizes the use of the resource.
”The company is vigorously opening avenues for infrastructural gas development through various gas projects spread across the country.
“Our focus is how do we move from predominantly oil player to gas player and not just for gas for the sake of gas but gas for power generation, and for industrialization,” she said.
Eyesan explained that the NNPC Ltd is also focused on emission reduction and gas flare-out.
“We want to capture all gas flared, utilize it and for domestic use and and ultimately, increase our energy transition footprints.
“NNPC is keying into the government agenda of using gas as a transition fuel and for us, we want to ensure not only the domestic gas market, but we also expand that to the region and internationally,” she said.
NNPC Ltd’s Executive Vice President, however, called on African countries to collaborate with one another in order to ensure even distribution of energy resources.
According to Eyesan, collaboration is key as not all countries within the sub-region are endowed with equal with equal proportion of energy resources.
“For us to ensure that we continue to subsist within the sub-region, we must be willing to work collaboratively and ensure that there is even distribution of energy resources we have across the sub-region.”
On energy transition, Eyesan said the subject has 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 continue to look at areas where it has competitive advantage to define the strategy.
Energy experts on the panel included the Chief Upstream Strategist, Energy, S&P Global Commodity Insights, Bob Fryklund; President of Pathways Alliance, Kendall Dilling and the Executive Vice President, Exploration and Production International, Equinor, Philippe Mathieu.
