Adewale Sanyaolu, Houston, Texas
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s (NNPC)’s upstream subsidiary, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), has disclosed plans to acquire oil blocks in West Africa and beyond.
Group Managing Director of NNPC, Dr. Maikanti Baru, stated this at the opening of the Nigerian Pavilion at the ongoing Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) 2018, which opened Monday in Houston Texas, USA.
Baru said the NNPC has perfected strategies to become the energy company of the future by making inroads into new frontiers through acquisition of oil blocks in the West African region and beyond.
“We would push our flagship to be taking blocks in other economies and compete just as Integrated Data Services Limited (IDSL) has been able to do.
He equally explained that Oilfield Services, which started in 2009 is also a budding division that would eventually become a full-fledged company offering services to all other regions and parts of the industry working in all those areas that NNPC is not acting as a service company.
On the OTC, which attained 50 years, Baru said indigenous companies in Nigeria have been able to grow capacity over the years as they now compete favourably with some of their counterparts in various fields of the oil and gas industry.
The NNPC GMD tasked service providers to go out and look for more partners with better technology to enable them to excel, especially in areas they consider difficult, adding that they should also emulate some companies that are displaying their diversification by integrating so that the country could have more conglomerates.
He said the OTC has been concentrating its activities around Houston and will continue to serve as a focal point for bringing different people with different ideas and services together.
The NNPC boss said the exhibition today marks a great improvement not just in terms of quality but in the number of companies that are giving service in the Nigeria oil and gas industry.
Baru said he was particularly impressed comparing what the OTC was in the 90s to what he saw yesterday, stating that in the 90s, the attendance at OTC was more or less a jamboree. But today, progress has been made.