The federal government has reiterated its readiness to harnesses Nigeria’s oil and gas potentials in other to maintain her leading position in Africa in the area of crude oil production .
The Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, disclosed this yesterday in a key note address at the second session of the 2014 Nigeria Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition in Abuja.
He said: “Nigeria remains Africa’s largest producer with the inherent capacity to boost production to over 3mpd from renewed operations in divested assets and planned deep-water projects. While there have been some concerns over divestments that are going on by the oil majors in our shallow water and some of our onshore assets, it has created an opportunity for much greater entry participation of the indigenous private sector.”
The minister said apart from security challenges, the industry had also suffered from limited institutional capacity, poor funding of investments, high technical costs, obsolete laws, outdated fiscal regimes and infrastructure constraints with particular respect to gas commercialisation.
She said government had managed to maintain stability up till very recently in the supply and distribution of petroleum products across the country, and that the recent shortages which was recently experienced in some parts of the country were as a result of the combination of supply hitches created by some false perception, panic buying, hoarding, diversions and rumours of increases in prices of petroleum products.
