The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has reiterated its commitment towards utilising Nigeria’s gas resources to trigger Nigeria’s industrialisation and economic development.

The NNPCL Executive Vice President, Upstream, Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, said this during a panel session at the ongoing 2024 CERAWeek Conference in Houston, the United States, on Tuesday, March 19.

Eyesan said Nigeria is a predominantly gas-rich country which boasts over 200TCF of gas that can be leveraged for the country’s industrialisation and economic development.

She noted that NNPCL plans to deepen gas utilisation domestically for industrialisation and ensure that the entire country feels and optimises the use of the resource.

She said the company is vigorously opening avenues for infrastructural gas development through various gas projects spread across the country.

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“Our focus is how do we move from predominantly oil player to gas player and not just for gas for the sake of gas but gas for power generation, and for industrialisation,” Eyesan as quoted as saying in a statement issued by the NNPCL spokesman, Olufemi Soneye, on Wednesday.

Eyesan noted that the NNPCL is also focused on emission reduction and gas flare-out, saying: “We want to capture all gas flared, utilise it and for domestic use and ultimately, increase our energy transition footprints.

“NNPC is keying into the government agenda of using gas as a transition fuel and for us, we want to ensure not only the domestic gas market, but we also expand that to the region and internationally.”

While calling on African countries to collaborate with one another in order to ensure even distribution of energy resources, the NNPCL Vice President said collaboration is key as not all countries within the sub-region are endowed with equal with equal proportion of energy resources.

“For us to ensure that we continue to subsist within the sub-region, we must be willing to work collaboratively and ensure that there is even distribution of energy resources we have across the sub-region,” she added.

On energy transition, Eyesan said the subject has evolved over the years, adding that for Sub-Saharan Africa, the narrative has been on how to address the energy poverty issue while for Nigeria, the NNPCL will continue to look at areas where it has competitive advantage to define the strategy.

The Star