The former Minister of States for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, has stated that one of the ways Nigeria can grow her crude oil reserves and increase oil production, is by ensuring that the country’s refineries are in proper working condition.
This was revealed over the weekend during an interview session. The ex-Minister emphasised that it will be easier to deal with the challenges facing the Nigerian oil and gas sector (including the wrong concept of fuel subsidy) if only bulk of the consumption is produced locally.
According to Ibe Kachukwu, adequate legislation, predictability of the terms, and speed of approvals are needed to grow reserves and also improve daily barrels produced.
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He also highlighted the need for Nigeria to become a friendly investment destination in order to attract investors from across the world.
He said Nigeria is seen as a difficult investment destination and so investors within the sector will be keen to seek out for alternative oil reserves and investment opportunities. They will, however, seek a market with a higher return of investment.
“There is too much politics involved in making investment decisions and you cannot predict where it is going to end. Understand that oil is somebody’s future dreamland, the belief that down there is something good relying on data generated by seismic studies.”
“But there is no certainty, it is basically a gamble. An uncertain investment environment is a recipe for anarchy.”
“The reason you find some countries doing very well is that they are predictable and things seem fast. There is no political interference as we have in Nigeria,” his statements read in parts.
As earlier reported, Nigeria’s oil reserves stood at 37.453 billion barrels between 2016 and 2017. More so, 37.062 billion barrels of crude were produced in 2015, while 37.448 billion barrels were produced in 2014.
Source: Nairametrics
Samson Oyedeyi
