The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd has been praised for great performance by eminent businessmen and entrepreneurs, Alhaji Aliko Dangote and Mr. Tony Elumelu.
Dangote, African’s richest man while commending the NNPC boss, said by its sterling performance under its group Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, NNPC has what it takes to become the African version of Saudi Arabia’s Aramco.
Mr Tony Elumelu while also commending the NNPC, said the current NNPC under Kyari deserve praise for the effort it has made to curb crude oil theft in the country.
Speaking the ongoing 2023 Upstream Investment Management Services Ltd (NUIMS) Annual Value Assurance Review (AVAR) Workshop, with theme, ‘Consolidating for Growth in PIA Era.’ Dangote made it clear that the NNPC can generate billions of dollars in revenue if the right decisions are made.
He said the PIA brought the transformation of NNPC from a government establishment to a commercial entity with no recourse to government funding.
“NUIMS has a critical role to play in unlocking funding to take advantage of the huge opportunities in the sector as well as to actively manage the investments to repay its loans, generate reasonable returns, and fund investment in new opportunities”, Dangote said.
Dangote said, we need to look at our infrastructure and see how we can take ourselves to the next level and it has to be driven by NNPC because they are the largest conglomerate and whatever happens to NNPCL their assets, it actually happens to us either directly or indirectly.
He also made it clear to the audience that the NNPC needs to roll out massive investments in terms of oil and gas to meet demand, adding that there are many off-takers waiting to invest.
The business mogul while advising said, “Let’s begin with delivering strong returns, which of course is a function of price and cost. While price in your industry is determined by the market and so clearly outside your control, the same cannot be said about cost. More aggressive cost targets need to be adopted and NUIMS staff rewarded with juicy bonuses if they meet these targets”.
On the part of Mr Elumelu, he said due to the efforts of the NNPC Ltd, Heirs Oil & Gas has witnessed 96 per cent recovery rate.
“When I listened to the Group CEO speak today, talking about us moving to 2.5 million barrels we challenge him to do more. I believe that it is achievable. From losing 97 per cent of our 50,000 barrels production, interestingly and it will be bad of me to have this platform and not share this here.
“That day, I got a call from the GCEO and I thought he was going to kill me for speaking up. To my greatest surprise, he said to me, ‘Tony, we are sorry about what is happening; we are doing something about it; it will be corrected.
“They worked as a team and the Board of the NNPC, the FG, the security agencies, and last month our recovery factor was 96 per cent. So GCEO NNPC, you have delivered.
“I speak from experience, a beneficiary and one who cried out before and today standing up today to say we have improved our production and that is what we need to encourage more investments in the industry.”
Kyari in his remarks stated the challenges facing the oil and gas industry globally has made it compelling for the NNPC to come with more ingenious ways of doing things.
He said: “The crux of the industry is to make sure the upstream industry works. If the upstream works, there would be cash in the country. We are in cash crunch in the country today, we are in forex crunch today because the upstream has not gotten to a level where we can have surplus to support the economy.
“As a company, NNPC is leading this process, we are required to ensure that production cost is optimum, we have interest in nearly every business in the upstream sector and even in the midstream and our performance determines what happens in the industry. We are in a position to go back to normalcy.”
“NNPC must cooperate with its partners to solve the energy challenges facing the country, as, according to him, it is only through collaborative efforts with its stakeholders and partners that the NNPC can guarantee energy for the nation’s industrialization”.he concluded.
