By Edith Ike-Eboh
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said the country had saved a minimum of three billion dollars per annum on Crude oil production.
In a statement signed by Mr Ndu Ughamadu, Group General Manager, Group Affairs Division, on Wednesday in Abuja, it said the cost of crude oil production went down from 78 dollars per barrel as at August 2015 to 23 dollars per barrel.
This, it said represented 70.5 per cent reduction in production cost.
It said the Group General Manager of National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), a unit of NNPC, Mr Dafe Sejebor, disclosed this during the inauguration of the Anti-Corruption Committee of the unit.
He said NAPIMS arrived at the figure after looking at the difference between the 78 and 23 dollars which represent the old and new cost of production in relation to the present daily average production in the country.
“If you knock down your cost of production from 78 dollars per barrel to 23 dollars, take the difference and multiply by the average daily production, you will discover that we are saving a minimum of 3billion dollars in the upstream for both Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) and Joint Ventures (JVs)”, he said.
He added that the target was to bring the cost of production to between 17 and 19 dollars for onshore and offshore production respectively.
He commended the Federal Government for its support to the NNPC management in tackling the challenges in the petroleum industry, especially the cash call exit agreement signed in 2016 and the reduction of contracting circle from three years to six months.
On the new Petroleum Policy, Sejebor said it was necessitated by the increasing difficulty in operating the petroleum industry within the framework of the old Petroleum Act in the face of the delayed passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).
He said the policy would restore investors’ confidence in the industry pending the full passage of the entire PIB by the National Assembly.
Commenting on the NAPIMS Anti-Corruption Committee, he urged the management and staff to let the principles of accountability, integrity, honesty and transparency be their watchword.
He charged them to generate positive ideas to help tackle the challenges facing the industry and help reverse its fortunes.
He urged staff to key into the NNPC management’s zero tolerance for corruption.
The Group Managing Director of NNPC, Dr Maikanti Baru, while inaugurating the Anti-Corruption Unit at Corporate Headquarters recently, had directed all the Strategic Business Units (SBUs) and Corporate Service Units (CSUs) to establish their own anti-corruption committees.
NAPIMS is the first to comply with the directive. (NAN)
