…pledges to collaborate with unions

Olusola Bello

The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) has enumerated the strategies it is deploying to enable the country to achieve the much elusive 40 billion barrels oil reserve as well as and three million barrels per day (bpd).

The chief Executive Officer, NUPRC, Gbenga Komolafe, disclosed this in Lagos, in his keynote address at the opening ceremony of the ongoing 39th Annual International conference and exhibition of the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE).

The conference with the theme titled, “Petroleum Exploration and Production in a New World: What Next after the Global Crises.”

According to him, a key element of the strategy would be the initiation of a Public, Private, Partnership (PPP) involving security agencies, private operators and other stakeholders to address the challenging issues of crude oil theft, sabotage and pipeline vandalism.

According to Gbenga Komolafe, other steps being taken included, Collaborative efforts between operators, communities and the deployment of state-of-the-art technology to monitor pipelines in remote areas is on course.

“Already, as a commission, we have commenced consultation with relevant stakeholders towards the achievement of these objectives.

Furthermore, an aggressive policy on routine Asset Integrity Management to cub crude leakages and spills caused by aging facilities will be adopted, just  as an initiative to reduce the cost of production while also benchmarking cost across terrain is ongoing are on the table

According to the NUPRC boss, he said the commission was making provision to incentivise drilling targets at deeper horizons and to also provide guidelines to ensure seismic acquisition design to image deep plays.

“Attractive incentive was being made to encourage multi-client and speculative data companies to acquire state-of-the-art data in open acreage to facilitate exploration activities.”

Komolafe, however, noted that oil production in Nigeria has declined to an average of 1.6 million bpd in 2021, attributing the decline in production to theft, insecurity, aging facilities,  decline in exploration, and production enhancement initiatives.

He said as the upstream technical and commercial regulator, the agency was committed to addressing the issues causing the decline in daily production in order, “to increase our reserves to 40 billion barrels and raise our production to three million barrels per day.”

However, in acknowledgment of the current energy transition,  he also listed some initiatives aimed at driving Nigeria’s compliance to the global clean energy objective -the reduction of carbon emission to 1.5C by 2050.

Among the measures he listed were to aggressively implement the Nigerian Gas Flare Commercialisation Programme (NGFCP), and ensure that all approved Field Development Plans (FDPs) incorporate full gas utilisation and monetisation programmes.

In a related development, NUPRC boss has promised to collaborate with the two oil and gas industry unions, Petroleum and natural gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (Pengassan) and the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) for industrial harmony and smooth operations of the sector.

He gave the assurance when the Presidents of PENGASSAN, Festus Osifo and NUPENG,   Williams Akporeha both paid him a courtesy visit in his office in Abuja on Wednesday.

He stated that the objective of the collaboration was to foster appropriate synergy to enable smooth operations in overriding national interest.

He reiterated that since his assumption of office, staff welfare has been his cardinal focus and that was the reason he immediately implemented the promotion of staff who had been stagnated over the years to motivate and promote industrial harmony.

He emphasized that he set up work teams on assumption of office with clear terms of reference to address issues of staff welfare like legacy issues which requires redress for the sake of justice and fairness.

He promised that as part and parcel of the union he will continue to promote equity   in the affairs of the Commission and in accordance with the Petroleum industry Act (PIA) 2021

The visiting team while congratulating the CCE on his appointment assured him of their readiness to collaborate with the Commission in all areas of oil and gas industry operations as a major stakeholder.

They reiterated their belief in dialogue as a means to resolve industrial issues and thanked the CCE for the recent promotion of stagnated staff.