‘Nigeria accounts for 1% of world daily oil production’

• IOCs’ Divestment, Opportunity For Indigenisation, Says Seplat Boss

The under-exploitation of hydrocarbons in Nigeria only put the country at producing just one per cent of the world’s daily oil output, Chief Executive Officer, Seplat Energy Plc, Roger Brown, has said.

He said indigenous energy companies have a Nigeria investment appetite and are not looking to leave the country, adding that they understand the country’s risks well and have a more practical approach to macro events with a long-term investment horizon.
 
According to him, Nigeria accounts for one per cent of the world’s daily oil production, but the potential in the sector remains vast.
  
“The sector players need to work together more collaboratively to ‘grow the pie’. It is a shared risk and shared prosperity scenario. We should work together to grow and monetise the nation’s resources, particularly when worldwide demand for liquids will fall – at some point,” he added.

Narrating the Seplat Energy transition story, he said the company was developing its upstream business by selectively expanding its asset base, optimising the gas/oil mix, increasing production, reducing costs and carbon intensity, and increasing revenue assurance by diversifying routes to market.
 
Chairman of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NRC), Isa Modibbo, said divestments by the IOCs were creating opportunities and possibilities for Nigeria’s educated youth.
 
Noting that he was happy about the ongoing divestments, Modibbo said no country in the world keeps its national patrimony in the hands of a third party.
 
Admitting that oil remains a very important tool for national development, diplomacy and power, he said the world had reached a stage where oil was no longer what it used to be and that technology was becoming the next big thing.