The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) has called for deeper collaboration among upstream operators, especially independent producers, to find solutions to the challenges hindering the effective development of divested assets in the nation’s oil and gas industry.
According to a statement by Chief Corporate Communications Officer NNPC Ltd, Olufemi O. Soneye, the company’s Executive Vice President, Upstream, Mrs. Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, made the call during a panel session at the ongoing 2024 Nigerian International Energy Summit (NIES 2024) holding in Abuja.
Speaking on the theme: “Innovation, Collaboration, and Resilience: Empowering Independent Producers in the Dynamic Energy Era”, Eyesan stated that past experiences with divestments and how the assets were operated have left much to be desired as most of them experienced a drop in production rather than growth.
“In the industry, if you want to measure success, there are some basic indicators that you utilise – production growth, reserves growth, and asset integrity. If I were to evaluate prior investment initiatives and scale the actors using these indices, I would be untrue to myself if I say everybody has done well. Yes, we acquired the assets; but today, we are worse off in terms of production than we were when we did the acquisition”, the EVP lamented.
“Collaboration cannot be overemphasized. Somebody said we should be in a state of emergency, and I totally agree with that. It’s not by sitting here and talking about the challenges, I think we should have a war room where we raise the issues and set out concrete plans to resolve them rather than wait for stakeholders individually to take them on. We need collaboration, collaboration, and collaboration”, she enthused.
