The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has paid $1billion out of its $5billion cash call.
The Group Managing Director, Dr. Maikanti Baru stated this in Abuja while addressing the corporation’s workers via a mail broadcast to commemorate his two-year anniversary.
In a statement issued on Thursday, Baru explained that the corporation has worked hard to sustain production level above an average of 2million barrels per day (bpd) this year.
He said aside securing approval and signing off the novel financing structure with Schlumberger for the NNPC/First E&P JV, which is expected to deliver a peak production of 50kbopd and 120million standard cubic feet of gas per day (MMscfd) by 2019.
He said the corporation remains globally competitive to ensure value addition to the nation’s hydrocarbon resources for the benefit of Nigerians and other stakeholders.
Baru, who described his two years in the saddle as “exciting”, said ever since he was appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari, he has enjoyed a great level of support from all the workers in moving the corporation forward.
“Going forward, our priority will be to remain globally competitive. In pursuing this, we will ensure the gradual transition of NNPC from an integrated oil and gas company to an energy company. We will also review our business models to reflect current operations reality with improved profitability, transparency and accountability as the cornerstone,” Dr. Baru told the workers in the nine-page address.
He said his leadership would ensure improved collaboration with local communities, states, local governments and relevant agencies, improved security and safety of personnel and infrastructure, improved human capital development as well as optimised NNPC’s non-core oil businesses.
The GMD said the 12 Business Focus Areas (12 BUFAs) was designed to succeed, having emplaced aggressive business improvement policies to ensure NNPC’s performance threshold across the oil and gas value chain.
He said NNPC under his watch had initiated and successfully completed milestone deliverables in the upstream, midstream, including the refineries and in the downstream, leading to improved performance and business stability across the corporation’s major operations and entire value chain activities.
In the midstream sub-sector, Dr. Baru observed that NNPC had remained a critical gas supplier to the domestic market with a dominant market share and supporting Government’s gas-to-power initiative, currently supplying an average of 720mmscf/day which represents about 47 per cent of total gas supply to the domestic gas market.
