Teddy Oscar, Abuja
The management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has expressed its readiness to reinvigorate and increase the domestic consumption of the liquefied natural gas otherwise known as cooking gas across the country.
Engr. Andrew Yakubu, group managing director of the corporation, who made the commitment on Wednesday, urged Nigerians to embrace the use of cooking gas in their daily uses.
Yakubu spoke while delivering a key note address at the combined graduation ceremony of chief officers management development programme of batches 069 to 072 at the NNPC Towers, Abuja.
He noted that as part of efforts to reduce the pressure on kerosene consumption, the NNPC is refocusing its strategy to encourage and aggressively grow the consumption of LPG, which provides a cleaner and cheaper energy alternative.
“NNPC’s footprint in the domestic gas market has attained unprecedented growth. With the commissioning of the NPDC’s 100 million standard cubic feet of gas per day Oredo gas processing facilities and the acquisition of the new assets, NPDC is now the biggest producer and supplier of gas into the domestic market, contributing over 400 million standard cubic feet of gas per day,” Yakubu posited.
He stated that the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) is being repositioned to become a medium sized independent Exploration and Production Company with a production capacity of at least 250,000 barrels per day by the year 2015.
According to him, the current NPDC assets base has grown with the assignment of new oil mining leases.
He stressed that the management, under his watch, is determined to further pursue new strategies to grow production to the target of 250,000bpd by 2015 from the current level of 130,000bpd.
The NNPC helmsman said that in line with the strategic direction to support the Federal Government to increase national crude oil reserve and producibility to 40 billion and four million barrels per day, there is aggressive exploration campaign in offshore, onshore and the inland basins of Chad, Anambra, Benue, Bida and Sokoto Dahomey.
