The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke

  • NAPE urges DPR, minister on fluid metering, accounting

    NAPE urges DPR, minister on fluid metering, accounting

    Explorationists have urged the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, to address back allocation of Basic Sediments and Water (BSW) during crude oil production reconciliation and imposition of disproportionate volume of crude by some facility owners on indigenous operators.

    Independent oil firms, especially indigenous companies that use other firms’ pipelines and facilities to convey their crude oil from point of production to the terminals, have been complaining of losing volumes of oil as what they get at the terminal point is substantially lower.

    The Director, DPR, Mr. George Osahon, pledged to ensure that measures would be adopted to address these issues, when he received a communiqué on behalf of the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison- Madueke. The communiqué was generated from a workshop on “Fluid Metering and Accounting in the Oil & Gas Industry” organised by the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE).

    The workshop and communiqué were steps being taken by NAPE to address the unresolved issues of inaccurate metering raised by the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI).

    “You will recall that there have been a lot of issues regarding NEITI and metering and about what we need to do, some of these issues emanate from here and we are paying a lot of attention to them,” NAPE President, Mrs. Adedoja Ojelabi said while handing over the document to the DPR chief.

    Osahon said: “The document (communiqué) will come back for us to study and advise again on what we should do, how we should do it, and when we should do it. We will turn that into a plan of action of what we will do so that at least those companies that are suffering now especially those that are co- utilising facilities will have a new lease of life.”

    NAPE President, Adedoja Ojelabi, stated that the workshop on fluid accounting and metering was NAPE’s demonstration of its commitment to resolving issues that impact negatively on the oil and gas industry. She added that one of the ways NAPE does this is by providing platforms like the special management workshop.

    She said: “The production of the document has come out from a lot of work, meetings and the consensus reached by stakeholders. We hope that the document will be useful to the DPR, the government, the oil and gas industry and particularly Independents. We also see that industry is likely to witness more and more of such issues but we hope we can nip them in the bud before they become major irritations in the industry.”

    Also present at the event was NAPE’s President-elect, Mr. Chikwendu Edoziem, who expressed optimism that the communiqué, when adopted, will bring lasting solutions to the issues of fluid metering and accounting in the oil and gas industry.

  • ‘IOC’s divestment good for local players’

    ‘IOC’s divestment good for local players’

    THERE should be no anxiety over the assets divestments by international oil companies (IOCs). The development  will not create a crisis in the oil and gas industry, the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, has said. The trend actually provides opportunity for indigenous companies to become active players in the upstream sub-sector of the industry, according to the minister.

    The Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Ohi Alegbe, in a statement yesterday, said the minister spoke at an investment luncheon organised by the Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria (PETAN) held during the recent Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas, United States.

    Mrs. Alison-Madueke explained that with the divestments, indigenous oil and gas companies now have the opportunity to acquire the assets being divested as springboard for the development of local capacity.

    Speaking on Assets divestments in the Nigerian oil and gas industry: Opportunities and challenges, as theme,   the minister who was represented by the Group Managing Director, NNPC,  Andrew Yakubu, said the divestments by the IOCs were creating opportunities for indigenous oil and gas companies to partake in the upstream sector  to  grow capacity.

    “Let me allay your fears that the spate of divestments would not lead to crisis in the nation’s oil and gas industry, rather the divestment by the majors is changing the onshore corporate landscape and creating material brownfield opportunities for upstream players looking to enter the Nigerian upstream space,”Alison-Madueke noted.

    She observed that the divesting IOCs were not leaving the country but only shifting their focus from onshore to the more challenging frontiers of deep offshore which currently accounts for 60 per cent of Nigeria’s production.

    “The IOCs remain very much present in Nigeria. Shell still retains ownership of 34 onshore blocks while Total, ExxonMobil, and Chevron are still committing large amounts of capital to assets offshore Nigeria,” she explained.

    Highlighting the opportunities inherent in the divestment, Alison-Madueke stated: “The indigenous Nigerian companies have been presented with the opportunity to develop local operatorship capacity as well as boost local production and consequently grow into major upstream players.”

    She cited the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), the upstream subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), as an example of indigenous Nigerian company that has tapped into the opportunity provided by the divestment to transform from a small time player with a production of 60,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2007 to a mid-size player with a current production of over 140,000 bpd through the assignment of 55 per cent equity in 8 divested blocks.

    She disclosed that NPDC has grown to become the biggest producer and supplier of gas to the domestic market through its aggressive development of the assets assigned to it from the divestment process, adding that the Federal Government was ready to strengthen and support the company toachieve its medium term objective of growing production to 250,000 bpd.