The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, and its subsidiary the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, NPDC, have expressed their readiness to professionally and efficiently run some of the assets and oil mining leases transferred to it by Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC.
The Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Engr. Andrew Yakubu stated this over the weekend after the board meeting of the NNPC/NPDC in Warri, Delta State.
Engr. Yakubu said the corporation along with its flagship company, NPDC, is repositioning to ensure that its acquired assets remain productive to ultimately boast the revenue inflow to the Nigerian economy.
“With the divestment of Shell, NPDC is the top and the only option for indigenous participation that will replace companies like SPDC and other companies that wanted to divest their equities. So NPDC therefore, has taken over this obligation of value addition as the flagship operator of the upstream business of NNPC. NPDC is the gateway of capacity development and capability development of the upstream activities in Nigeria, Engr. Yakubu informed.
He said the activities of the NNPC/NPDC in warri has made NPDC the highest local producer of gas to the domestic gas requirement of Nigeria and this has gone along way in meeting the Federal Government aspiration in the area of power generation stressing that with the new status, NPDC remain the biggest indigenous gas supplier in Africa.
The NNPC helmsman noted that as a socially responsible Corporation, the NNPC/NPDC will step up its activities in the area of providing social amenities such as class room blocks, educational scholarship, providing health facilities roads and water to communities where its operations are domiciled.
He added that by partnering with the various tiers of government in providing basic amenities to oil bearing communities, a conducive environment that would guarantee smooth operations of the acquired assets would be provided stressing that the NNPC/NPDC would continue to touch the lives of Nigerians in many positive ways.
According to him, the assurances from the warri communities indicate that the coming of NPDC to warri would help in sustaining community development efforts in line with international best practices.
It would be recalled that through the support and vision of the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Maduke, the NNPC/NPDC took over the management of some OMLs in the bid to meet the aggressive target of producing 250,000 barrels of crude per day in 2015 by NPDC.