The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has announced plans to attract around US$48bn investment opportunities in the upcoming projects within the West African nation’s oil and gas industry
Dr Maikanti Baru, group managing director of NNPC, urged the stakeholders in the sector to utilise this opportunity.
Dr Baru made this call while speaking at a panel session on the topic ‘Insights on Future Exploration Hotspots: Opportunities for Africa’s Oil & Gas Industry’ under the sub-theme “The New Frontier for Africa’s Oil & Gas” at the 2019 International Petroleum Week conference.
Reeling out the numerous potentials of Africa’s Oil and Gas Industry, Baru said that the continent’s energy outlook was looking positive amid difficult operating and economic headwinds.
He explained that more than 41 bbo and 319 tcf of gas were yet to be discovered in sub-Saharan Africa alone, while between 2008 and 2017, exploratory success in the sub-region was at least 45 per cent.
According to him, there has been a surge in the capital expenditure (CAPEX) across Africa’s oil and gas sector, with close to US$194bn earmarked to be spent between 2018 and 2025 on 93 upcoming oil and gas fields in Africa.
“Out of this US$194bn, Nigeria accounts for US$48.04bn of the total CAPEX coming into upcoming projects in Africa over 2018 to 2025, with over 20 planned projects,” Baru stated.
Shedding more light on investment opportunities in Nigeria, Dr Baru observed that the NNPC’s frontier exploration service is drilling the Kolmani River-2 Well where desktop estimates revealed that about 400Bcf of gas is expected to be encountered.
He stressed that several new frontiers for exploration opportunities abound in Nigeria, even as offshore discoveries in the country have mostly been limited to between 1,000-1,500 metres of water depth.
According to him, issues related to legal and regulatory uncertainties, lack of infrastructure, skilled manpower shortage, transparency and accountability should be addressed on priority basis, so the continent’s oil and gas industry get a strong boost.